Tikhanovskaya vs. Lukashenko. The Patriarch’s Billion. Putin Is Afraid of You

[music]

everyone,

good evening, it's exactly 8:00 p.m. in Moscow, which

means that the program is live on air,

Russia of the Future, and I am its host, Alexei

Navalny, or, as a person involved in

"shaking the regime in Belarus," as I was called by

the Tsargrad TV channel. My

mug today, just like on the last broadcast,

incidentally shows that I

am, of course, in solidarity on this day with

the people of Belarus. But I

am not shaking any regime at all — I am demanding

the restoration of the rule of law in this

wonderful brotherly country. Today we will

talk in detail about what

is happening. Let me remind you

that you can send me questions, wishes, and complaints

using the hashtag Russia of the Future

on Twitter. If you don't use it, I won't be

answering. We have a button

that says Sponsor under the channel; you

can click it, subscribe, and become

one of the people standing behind

the Navalny Live channel and providing it

with regular support. We also have a link

below where donations are available, and

every contribution matters. Let me remind you

that we are still — this is probably already the fourth

broadcast in a row — continuing to raise money to pay

the fines of those people who last year

were not afraid to go out into the streets,

organized mass rallies against

the fact that they were deprived of the right to nominate their own

candidates. These people now have to

pay money on behalf of all of us, so we

are raising it for them. Please don't forget

to subscribe to the channel. But

what shall we start with? Erwin

Wake Of asks me about the case of the Khachaturyan sisters

and the New Greatness case. Let's

start with that. The case of the Khachaturyan sisters

is now

soon to be heard by a jury,

and my position has not changed:

I absolutely believe they are not guilty.

Yes, the sisters killed their father, but they

did so in response to years of

prolonged abuse — not just

mistreatment, but violence, including sexual

violence. In that sense, their actions

clearly constitute necessary

self-defense, and of course they should be

acquitted. I do not understand why

the Russian prosecutor's office

changed its position and is demanding

that they be convicted of premeditated murder.

Notice: not even for

exceeding the limits of self-defense — as if,

well, yes, he raped them, beat them, tortured them,

abused them, one of the girls was even recognized

as mentally unfit — but still,

he was driven to that point, so they

should somehow have acted more appropriately,

I don't know, gone to the police

if they hadn't already, or whatever else, or

just fought him off with a stick — but instead they

stabbed him with a knife right away. At least the prosecutor's office could have said

that — it would still have been outrageous, but

from the standpoint of a legal

construction, that would at least have been something one could

discuss. But here they are simply saying

that this was premeditated murder. That is

outrageous. I believe the sisters

must be freed. I hope that

since they will be tried by a jury,

they will be found not guilty. But this will be a very

interesting

and important trial. One very interesting and

important trial ended today — it was the

New Greatness case. It really is

somewhere

— I saw this metaphor today — a train

racing into the abyss passed one of its most important

stops. In

fact, that is true. Today's

sentences in the New Greatness case

were monstrous. There were several

defendants; several of them received

suspended sentences, but three people received

enormous terms — 7 years in prison, 6 years in prison,

and among them was one of the main

defendants, a man named Kostylenkov,

who last week

published a long letter in which he described in detail

the torture he was subjected to. He was

raped, he was

raped with the handle of a meat tenderizer,

the kind you use in the kitchen to pound meat or

chicken and the like. Under that abuse,

he gave a confession, and today

the court answered the question, essentially:

if you cut a person to pieces and

force him to confess to something, will that

still be considered the queen of evidence, and will it

work in a Russian court? Today the answer

was yes, it works perfectly. As with

the entire New Greatness case, it is absolutely

and totally fabricated. But the logic of

the system works like this: one day

some

they

— corrupt, vile, disgusting officers of the

security services, the Interior Ministry, the FSB — decided to earn

themselves a promotion, and to do that they did

the following: they inserted themselves into an ordinary

group chat of opposition-minded young people.

There are a million such chats in every region,

and they started writing, "Hey guys,

wouldn't it be great to overthrow Putin's regime?"

Putin has had enough of us. The guys reply that

yes, Putin has worn us out,

it would be good to drive him out. And then there were

some fifty people in that chat,

completely unfamiliar with one another and, as I

understand it, not connected in real life either. And

one person named Ruslan — yes, the one

about whom it later turned out that he was not

Just some kind of mug.

First thinner, then less so.

Thinner-looking — the person you see on screen is Ruslan D.

who, officially, in the materials of this

case is listed as an FSB agent, and

this very Ruslan D. writes in the

chat: "Cool."

We’re all so cool here, so we’re going to

carry out— well, hey, I’ve got

a place, let’s meet in

the premises at night. There were kids sitting in that chat,

poor kids, looking for something exciting, well,

young people wanting to hang out — so, let’s

meet at this place. And they met.

They started discussing some kind of naive struggle,

that sort of thing. Then, at the next meeting,

Ruslan D. brings papers and proudly says,

"You know, guys, I drafted the charter of our

organization. Let’s adopt it, let’s do it."

And they adopted it. So this is how it unfolded, step by step:

he rented them a space, he

wrote their charter for them — an FSB agent — and they

accepted a few more people, and three of

them, in addition to this Ruslan, were

also agents, either from the MVD or the FSB.

That is, out of ten people there, four were

simply agent provocateurs from the security services.

So basically, some kids

who were clueless and just wanted

to socialize in that group chat

were dragged into an organization that

the authorities themselves created, and today they were given 6 to 7 years

in prison. And yes, of course, they don’t

talk about how they went out to a

training ground and practiced

throwing Molotov cocktails.

They went because those very

provocateurs came and said,

"Guys, we need to prepare. Let’s go

to the training ground and throw

bottles with gasoline somewhere. It’ll be fun, like,

you could go out for shashlik (barbecue),

you could go for a walk in Gorky Park,

or you could go somewhere and throw

bottles with gasoline — that seems even more

romantic, something to remember."

And that is how this whole

case was built entirely on provocation. After that,

once they were detained,

several people were tortured, and under

torture they wrote down all kinds of nonsense about

how they supposedly wanted to overthrow

Putin by violent means — and there you have it,

the case is ready, the statistics improve,

great, our agencies are fighting

extremists — by destroying the lives of completely innocent

people who were guilty of nothing. They ruined their lives, and even

those who got suspended

sentences today had previously been held in a SIZO (pretrial detention center). This

Ruslan is probably celebrating a new

rank, or a cash bonus, or

something else, while someone else will spend seven years

in a penal colony for absolutely nothing. And this case is, of course,

very important. Why is this stop on the route so important?

Why here? Because, well, because

it was all so blatant — not even

just "stitched together with white thread" (an obvious frame-up) — I mean, if you look directly

at the case materials, this isn’t

made up, it’s not the lawyers’ position — it’s right there:

it literally says that an FSB agent came,

wrote their charter, rented them an apartment, rented

them a space, arranged everything, and then

boom — somehow it turned into an extremist

organization. And on top of that,

someone was tortured. And in this case

there is absolutely nothing resembling

a legal basis, and yet

they still got seven-year terms. You get that much for

murder, and these people did

absolutely nothing. And this

will continue. I understand that

this doesn’t sound very optimistic, but it will

continue. And the remedy, the answer to this, is

1 million people out on the streets of Moscow.

I’ll probably repeat this several more times

during this broadcast, but you see, nothing else

works anymore. Public

outcry, newspaper articles, lawyers expressing outrage,

open letters being written, petitions or

things like that — there was a very

representative

group of very well-known people there, Akunin,

journalists, all sorts of prominent figures — everyone

was outraged, everyone spoke out, and it made absolutely

no difference. The prosecutor asked for what they asked for, and that was that.

Only one thing works. We’ve seen

how many times have we seen people

released — but it works

in only one way: when out in the streets

without any permits, simply

a large number of people come out. That is

the only thing our authorities still respond to.

They don’t care about anything else.

The ducks are swimming by, I can see them on the screen. A reminder:

you can go to the description, click

the link, and send these ducks off. They’re

very much needed, these ducks. Let me remind you,

they’re swimming along carrying money that isn’t

coming to us — they’re not crawling to us, they’re swimming

to independent candidates: Yasha,

Galyamina,

Sobol, Alburov, and everyone else

who need large amounts of money.

I have a question here from Albert.

No, well, and Flue asks me

a great question: "Alexei, explain why it’s necessary

to register for Smart Voting

if I already understand its principles?

So what’s the point of registering?

Albert, the point of registering — the main

point — is that they’ll shut us the hell down

completely two days before

Smart Voting, and otherwise we won’t be able

to get in touch with each other. So if you go to the description

of this video — right now, literally

right now — and look at the link for

the registration — there it is, right there on our screen —

and you’ll notice that it’s

It’s a strange link because the very first one

the link we had was simply smart dot

com, or maybe it was even smart dot vote, and

so why are we using such a strange

link? Because that site was

blocked for us, and this one is hosted on

a special service whose servers

are difficult for Roskomnadzor (Russia’s media and internet regulator) to block.

That’s why we need you

to register, so that

first, we can stay in touch with you

if our site gets taken down, if

some attack knocks out a bot or

something else goes wrong, we can at least send you an email

or send you a text message. In other words, we need

many different ways to contact you

because you yourselves—you live where they

know you, but in Novosibirsk, or Tomsk, or

in Izhevsk, I guarantee you probably just

don’t know who to vote for, because

all these people, all these surnames, will seem

the same to you. Besides, on the

last day, something may change.

Someone may be removed from

registration, and information you saw

on the site three days ago may already be

out of date, and we need to make sure that

on the eve of voting, we have a way to

reach you and send it. Second, though,

we need to see how many people

are registering so that we understand

the forecast, so that we can give candidates

some recommendations.

And so on and so forth. In other words, this is

planning. Smart Voting

is a big, big campaign. It’s not

just me calling for it—Smart

Voting is something a large number of people work on,

from programmers to, forgive me

Lord, political analysts who sit there and

figure out who people should vote for. So

for this systematic work, we need you

to register. Besides, observers on

the Smart Voting website—you can sign up

as an observer there as well, and so

please go there and sign up. This is

a very important thing. It’s not that we need

it just because it’s nice when people simply

support us and say, well, I support it,

I understand the principles, but I’m not going to register,

and thank you for that too. But if you

do register, you enable us

to build a fighting machine that

will take on United Russia.

So.

Serdita writes in: “Alexei, for the third

week already”—lots and lots of exclamation marks—“for three

weeks I’ve been asking what the overall

strategy is for three-day voting.

P.S. I’d like details on collecting

signatures for the Yekaterinburg mayoral election.”

So.

Well, the strategy with three-day voting—

our strategy is observers. We’ll recruit

lots of observers. What other strategy

could we have? I don’t like

three-day voting. We believe it

was introduced in order to make

falsification easier, and we will prepare many,

many observers and explain to them

all these new tricks that didn’t exist before,

like these so-called safe bags—some kind of

bag whose number has to be written down, and

you have to make sure that at 5 p.m. they put these

ballots into the bag, sealed it, and then come back in the morning

to verify the safe bag number, recount

the ballots, and so on. We have one strategy:

to persuade you to sign up

as observers, and then to train you and

try to protect our votes through

observation. In general, the strategy for

three-day voting is

that we need to oppose it, and

again, 42,000 people are watching us live

right now. I’m repeating in today’s broadcast for the second time

this phrase: until we see

huge numbers of people out in the streets, we will not

be able to say, ‘Cancel your damn

three-day voting, your early

voting.’ Nothing will happen. In 2012,

there were lots of people in the streets, and that’s why

they introduced video cameras, and for a while

elections became a little more honest. Then

somehow we stopped

going out into the streets about this so much and so often,

and so they rolled everything back, and they’ll roll it back

even further. So now

both we and the Kremlin are testing three-day

voting in the elections that will take place in

September, and we are testing observation. But

overall, by the State Duma elections,

I think there absolutely needs to be some kind of

major campaign to abolish all of this,

because, well, three-day voting

makes a lot of this largely meaningless.

A question is coming in about the explosion

in Beirut—what do I think about Beirut?

Well, what do I think? I think this is

a terrible tragedy. The explosion really was

horrific. One striking feature

of this explosion, from a media perspective,

was that there were

two explosions. Something started exploding first,

and naturally everyone around began filming

with their phones—the smoke, the fire, and so on—and

that’s why the main explosion was captured on

a huge number of mobile phones.

And the footage really does look

stunning. Those 17 seconds—if you watch them

from two angles, from the water and from the city—

it’s enormous.

A huge number of people were killed. It’s a terrible tragedy,

there’s no other way to describe it, no other word for it.

Irony—the word itself seems inappropriate

to use here. It’s just this

striking fact that it turned out

that the owner of the ship and of this cargo,

the owner

The owner of the vessel is an entrepreneur from Khabarovsk.

So it’s as if Khabarovsk somehow reached all the way

over there. Basically, the only thing I want

to say is that, of course,

what happened, happened

because there was a cargo of ammonium nitrate being transported by

an entrepreneur from Khabarovsk from one

place to another, from Batumi to Mozambique. Actually,

it’s very interesting, and Meduza published

an interview with the captain of this

vessel. I recommend everyone read it. But it wasn’t

just fertilizer they were carrying — it was fertilizer that is essentially

a component used in explosives.

The cargo was impounded and kept

in the port for several years, and that sounds like

simple negligence, just sheer incompetence,

but in fact it was

incompetence shaped by political conditions,

because all of this was happening in a country —

Lebanon — where, as is well known, a lot is

controlled by an organization like

Hezbollah, and in particular the port

was controlled by Hezbollah. And we saw,

we are seeing an example of how this is an absolutely

political setup: these guys, in order

to achieve their own goals,

control chunks of the economy,

the port in particular, make money from it,

and use that to finance their

activities. So they take the money,

but they don’t know how to run a port,

and so wherever there are these

politically motivated arrangements,

that really overtake or replace

professional management, this is the kind of thing

that happens. I mean, basically,

anyone who knows even a little bit

about this would probably be

horrified if you told them that

components for explosives were just sitting there for years

stored somewhere together with a warehouse

full of fireworks somewhere in the port. But that’s the kind of thing

that could happen. Read the interview

with the captain — it’s very interesting. He talks there

about how they struggled with this

cargo, how the crew was basically abandoned, how they weren’t paid,

how the crew of this vessel

was stuck on board because they weren’t being paid,

and the Russian embassy and consulate

didn’t care about them at all. Every day, every day, the captain

wrote emails to Putin: ‘We have

nothing to eat, we’re stuck on this ship,

please do something, we are

Russian citizens, get us out of here.’

Some local resident was bringing them,

for Christ’s sake, food every day

and basically saving them. Go to Mediazona and read it,

it’s quite interesting.

Finn.

Dirk asks: Alexei, are you planning

to supplement the Smart Voting project

with a strong recommendation to come to

the polls only on the final

official day of voting? Well, not exactly

a strong recommendation, but our lawyers

have several different opinions on this.

Some of them say that this is

some kind of made-up thing

that doesn’t really have much

practical significance, while others say it

does. But we discussed it, and overall

we decided that it definitely won’t make things worse,

so yes, absolutely, yes, we

believe people should come vote on

the last day — specifically on the day of

official voting, not before that. By the way,

this whole idea that people should

vote on the last day also came, in part,

from Belarus, where

multi-day and early voting

have existed for quite

a long time, and early voting there is

always a method for massive fraud, which is

exactly what is happening right now in that

wonderful country, right this very moment.

Andreev Odin asks: what do you think about

Lukashenko’s statement that they were deliberately

infected with coronavirus? The interview with

Lukashenko is out now.

If I say more, you’ll all run off to watch

that interview. Don’t run off. He gave

an interview to the well-known Ukrainian

journalist Gordon. I haven’t had time

to watch all of it — I only saw bits and pieces.

Lukashenko said a lot of

wild things there, but the parts

I did watch generally suggest

that they simply describe

a man who has been in power for 28 years,

or however long he’s been there, and who has

completely lost touch with reality.

He thinks the world revolves around him,

that he is the most important thing, that everything happens around him.

If there’s coronavirus, then it was deliberately

used to infect him — I mean, this is a complete

loss of contact with reality, which

can happen to anyone. It happened to

Putin because he has sat in power for 20 years.

It would happen to me too, or to

anyone else — to Lyubov Sobol, to Ilya

Yashin, to absolutely anyone, to

Barack Obama — it would happen if someone

stayed in power for 20 years, especially if

that power were effectively

absolute in nature, as in Belarus or

Russia. In that sense, we’re simply

seeing a guy who says all kinds of

deranged things and

doesn’t doubt for a second that he is

right, because simply

his entire 20-plus years of life as

a leader

and effectively the country’s monarch have turned

him into someone unhinged — and would do the same to anyone,

because, as I’ve said many times, the history

of humanity proves one thing to us: when

you stay in power for more than ten years,

you start to lose your mind.

And this

week marks the anniversary of this whole fabricated case.

And I want to brag a little to you—we,

I want to brag, and we should all be proud of each other,

you and us alike.

A year ago, this happened—here, seven

seconds, let's watch. There it is—the door being cut open.

Just give it seven seconds—this is how, this is how

it all began.

[music]

So, a year ago, these guys came rushing in.

I only found out about it the next day,

because at the time I was in a special detention center.

They brought

me the newspapers I subscribed to, and from the papers

I saw that a criminal case had been opened against ACF

over money laundering, with searches here and there.

Searches took place in hundreds of locations

simultaneously, and this was undoubtedly the largest

simultaneous

operation by the Russian security services since

something like 1937 (the year associated with Stalin's Great Terror).

That is absolutely true. Over all this time,

they carried out more than 300 searches. The case

is being handled by 141

Investigative Committee investigators across 45

regions of Russia. Bank accounts have been frozen—

248 of them—with 60

million rubles on them (about $650,000), including

some that are still frozen to this day, belonging to

people who have absolutely nothing

to do with us—just unrelated people with the same last name.

There were cases like that. And a year ago, all our

money was declared criminal, and we were labeled

a criminal organization. All of us here,

making broadcasts and videos, just by talking, were supposedly

engaged in laundering income

obtained by criminal means. And we

understood that the authorities' goal

through this case specifically was simply

to destroy the Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF)

as an organization—its structure,

its finances, everything else,

its institutional setup—because people in

the regions started being intimidated and driven away,

legally and politically. Well,

we've held out for a year now, and I'd

even say we've become stronger. We've had

to keep twisting ourselves into knots

to keep operating,

fully legally, paying

salaries, damn it, paying taxes, and so on,

and so on. But we're doing it thanks to

your help, so this is really, really

great. Because after all, this was originally

carried out pretty crudely

in order to scare people. But still,

all these video clips of searches—

you know, when everyone's ordered to stand

against the wall and so on—35 seconds. When you're

inside it, it's pretty unpleasant.

well,

it's that whole thing: 'Everybody stay where you are!'

They rush in like in a movie, announce themselves,

and start shouting.

Here at FBK and on Navalny LIVE,

the staff are already pretty experienced with this kind of thing,

so it doesn't make much

of an impression on them. But in the regions, of course,

when people saw videos like this,

for example from Chelyabinsk—30 seconds—the idea

was obvious: to make sure that

everyone else watching this would think 30

times before coming to work at our headquarters

or interacting with us at all.

In Chelyabinsk, people were being

dragged by the legs.

I

well,

So, what was I actually going

to brag about at the beginning, and what we should

all be proud of, is that almost

no one left. If we closed any

regional offices, we closed them only because we simply

didn't have enough money to keep them running. But in

the central structures and the regional

structures, almost no one left. And in that

sense, we are genuinely proud that

we work with truly excellent people—

reliable, decent, and brave. And thank you

very much as well—please keep

supporting us. Someone here is asking me:

Yevgeny Toptunov asks, 'What happens if I

send you a donation? Will they put me

on a blacklist?' Go ahead and send it. [laughter]

Don't be silly. It's impossible to put all

these people on some blacklist, and there

is no such thing as a blacklist. That's exactly what

they're counting on.

All that will happen is that one day Toptunov

will be 200 rubles poorer—or, I hope,

more—and will have helped the project.

They can't put you on a blacklist,

because there is no blacklist to put you

on. The only list you can be added to is the list

of good people who support

good causes. So this is absolutely

legal—you can send

donations. They are trying to steal your

donations by freezing them, while we are

trying to get hold of them before that

and use them somehow. We

are acting completely legally. This

criminal case is enormous,

interregional, with 141 investigators, and it is

totally, absolutely fabricated, and it should be

treated exactly that way.

There is essentially no danger

in sending us

donations. Now, about Khabarovsk—

Elena

Vlasova asks: 'When should we expect notification of whom

to vote for in October? I'm from Smolensk,

and I'm very worried that Smart

Voting won't reach us again.' Elena,

Smart

Voting works for us in all

cities with a population of, I think, more than

three hundred thousand, so in Smolensk it

will definitely be there.

When should you expect the notification? Look, we can't

send you the notification right now.

The final

candidate—their registration, as far as I know, can be

five days before the election or three days

before the election, depending on a number of

regional legal provisions, so

you'll receive the notification right beforehand. If we

sent it to you now, then in two

weeks, in mid-August, they'd simply

see whom we recommended and remove

him from the election altogether, so

we'll send it in the final days,

right before it—but you will definitely

get it, no doubt about it. And in Smolensk,

Smart Voting will work. Your

Elena Vlasova, dear, the task is to bring as many

people as possible into Smart Voting.

Why? Once again: all 3,000 people

watching this live—the most important [snorts]

thing is why Smart Voting works.

Because how many people will turn out? Take

Smolensk as an example—how many people in Smolensk will

come out to vote? Twenty percent at most.

With that low turnout, 20 percent, if

just 3 percent of people

take part in Smart Voting, then

our 3 percent, with 20 percent turnout,

turns into what? Fifteen percent.

Did I calculate that right? Right—15

percent. And by adding a full

15 percent to any candidate's column, taking it

from the other columns, we very significantly

increase his chances of winning. And if

this is the candidate we correctly identified, the

candidate who would otherwise have come in second,

we are practically guaranteeing him

victory over the United Russia candidate. But we need—we

still need 3 percent of Smolensk residents.

Smolensk—do we have 100 percent of them?

We do have 3 percent, we do have a hundred

percent. In Smolensk there are far

more people—yes, there are 60

percent against United Russia, 70

percent against United Russia—but we

need them all to vote together through

Smart Voting, so bring them in,

bring in as many people as possible. This

is it.

Well, that's the main job. For me

to persuade 53,000 people here out of

these—50... 3,000 people are watching right now.

By the end, by the end of the week,

a million people will have watched this broadcast. Of

that million, 350,000

people live in the territories where

voting will take place. Altogether, this

voting covers, well, about 40

million people living in that part of

the country where elections of one level or another

will be held in September. And what we need

is for those 350,000 people—you, the viewers

of this program—to persuade another 34

million people. That is absolutely possible,

and it will one hundred percent give us victory.

Fraud is an additional factor. We

will monitor it and resist it, but to win

technically, mathematically, we can beat them, and

it's not that hard. But everyone has to

make an effort. Register for

Smart Voting at

This week we discussed this

arrested United Russia member. I made a

short video about it today on

Instagram, but we wanted to talk about it

in more detail because, well, the situation

really struck me. The newspaper

—those pro-government papers, like

Komsomolskaya Pravda—and they put out

these kind of gloating reports: an arrested

United Russia member—look what a шикарный house, a mansion.

A mansion, and here's the raid taking place, so

his

his house, and

a car was found there, and so on. I

look at this and think, damn, where have I seen

where have I seen this house? Then I realize

that I saw this huge, beautiful house in

our investigation that we released

three years ago. Let's first take a look at

the search and raid of this house. The raid, by the way,

deserves separate mention—it just looks wonderful, the way they

raid ACF offices, break down doors,

rush in, people are screaming, and

here it's just a fairly small

group of people, and everything looks much

more relaxed than at an ACF office.

Let's watch a minute and a half of the search and raid

of the home of this especially dangerous United Russia member.

Let's do it.

Police, don't

the phone

on the floor, prohibited

weapon on

the steering wheel, yes, narcotics, items prohibited

in civilian circulation.

Saw it.

Which, you'll agree, is pretty funny: some

guy climbed in there somewhere, looked around. Our

preparation for raids, of course, looks

much more impressive. And when, in the ACF case,

on the first day they carried out searches

simultaneously in something like 50 or 70

regions, all at once, according to Moscow time,

on the same day—here it looked

a little different. And this sad

man walking around in his underwear that you saw

appears to be the owner of the dacha (country house).

And the guy's name is Alexei Grishin.

What's notable about him is that he's a vice-rector of Moscow State University,

and before that he was part of the team of

Governor Merkushkin, whom we

hate.

But everyone hates him. He was

But we've talked a lot here about

Lukashenko.

Of course, we're talking about Putin here.

But Merkushkin is basically Lukashenko squared.

For many years, he was the head of

the Republic of Mordovia, and then he was removed from there

and sent to Sama— to Samara

Region, not Saratov, Samara

Region. Then he ended up in Moscow, while

absolutely nothing touched him. And this is

the most fanatical, the craziest, the most

unhinged person there. On the territory of

Mordovia alone, he built at the same time

both a gulag and constantly

there were these Chechen-style elections, Chechen-style

percentages in elections — meaning that there

it was simply, out of all the non-Caucasian

republics, the worst lawlessness

by far. Merkushkin in

Mordovia, of course, stole a great deal,

stole a great deal, and actually this

Grishin who was arrested — he was the minister

of construction in Mordovia. Well, I also don't

know whether it was on the stadium in Saransk

they built or on something else, but they siphoned off

so much money they could have built

some gigantic, well—

these... and let me show you a video

from our video that came out as long as three years

ago. Let's rewind three years now and you'll see

a heavier me with a strange haircut

doing an investigation into

Mordovia. One minute. Langer Pushkina

invests his money not in his home

province at all, but settles down in a completely

different place. On Rublyovka, we found an entire

settlement belonging to the Merkushkin clan.

Living there are his son, two

of his son's business partners — one of them is also a

former deputy of the Mordovian State Assembly and

minister of construction, now in the new

Samara Region. Just look at this

beauty — you can immediately tell a regional

official lives here. We estimate the value of the construction minister's real estate

at 360

million rubles. The plot and house of Merkushkin's son

are worth 264

million rubles. The business partners

settled for something more modest — their houses and land in

total are estimated by the ACF at 121 million. As you can see,

the entire Merkushkin clan built themselves country homes

not in the village of Bolotnikovo near

Saransk, not in the village of Smyshlyaevka near

Samara. They all talk about what great

regional patriots they are, but in reality

they pull money out of their home region and

invest it in real estate on Rublyovka.

Ah,

I felt nostalgic looking at this clip

from the video. Our video production really

was still just a black wall back then, yes, but

still, we've come a long way since then.

That's what it looked like three years ago. Over these rather

years, it's pretty funny. What I want to say is this:

people tell us, "Oh, just look at what a

huge house. It's obvious he was cooking up

something. How else could it be? He used to be an official, now

he's a vice-rector at Moscow State University — let's jail him.

Horrible, horrible, horrible — let's jail him, let's

horrible, horrible, horrible. But then you all ran over to his

palace — and why don't you look at the other

palaces? Merkushkin's, for example —

everything else there is exactly the same: the same

officials with the same kinds of houses, the same

Mercedes cars, the same art

galleries, gold, piggy banks, bars — it's all

the same. But, you see, they pretend

as if they stormed one house, and

as if that house is somehow on the Moon

or on Mars, as though nothing else

is happening. I just—

three [clears throat] years ago, we were

shouting about this loudly, and everyone kept telling us

it was nonsense. But now at least one

person has been jailed, while all the others

around them keep stealing. Merkushkin

still hasn't faced the slightest

punishment. Do you really think a minister

could steal that much without his

governor knowing? Of course not. But this is United

Russia, and one of them somehow

fell out of line and ended up

taking the hit, while everything else still

remains one of the many, many mafias

inside United Russia that sit there

sorting out their own business, taking care of their own little arrangements. They all

remain in office, and this United Russia

is what we need to knock out. It's the foundation under

Putin's feet, and we need to strike at that

foundation, including through Smart

Voting right now. So please

register for Smart Voting and

take part.

So, Timofey Platonov asks me:

have I heard that many opposition

that many opposition politicians

in America are being boycotted by Twitter, bla—

that Twitter blocks many of them? Could the same thing

be pulled off with you? No, I haven't heard

of American politicians

having their Twitter accounts blocked.

It seems to me that the situation there wasn't exactly that.

The situation was that Twitter —

Twitter's administration — labeled

some of Trump's tweets as, like,

misleading information, or

I think they deleted one of his tweets,

which caused some kind of

massive scandal. But as for

Twitter blocking some large

number of politicians, I haven't

heard of that, Timofey.

[clears throat] Platonov: Alexei, Smart

Voting works, I've seen it for myself. What

do you think the system will come up with against

candidates backed by this kind of voting? The system

against this kind of voting

comes up with one thing: not letting anyone in at all,

not allowing Smart Voting candidates onto the ballot

— we'll talk a bit more about that today.

Let's discuss the first point in more detail, and the second one too.

they'll come up with a way to rig the elections.

even if they lost badly in terms of votes.

just throw them out somewhere, dump them somewhere.

Is it harder in Tomsk or in Novosibirsk?

and somewhere it's easier to dump them, in Voronezh or in...

in Tambov, where falsification is constantly going on.

Our task is to take part in these waves

of voting and deploy thousands of

observers. Thousands of people have already

registered.

And the task before us is— I was

asked something today like,

"Alexei, why do you look so sad?" And I was like:

I'm sad because we need 1,000

observers, thousands across the country,

to assign them, give them guidance, make sure they understand

how they'll work, train them, and so on.

It's a colossal amount of work that we

are doing, but most people

don't particularly notice it. But we have to

do it. And you need to sign up

to be observers, and we'll do this

difficult work. But if you, the

observers, aren't there, then there will be

no point in doing it. So in that

situation, I probably won't be walking around sad, I'll be

cheerful because there'll be less work. But in the

end I'll be even sadder,

because all the votes will be stolen.

Alexei, good evening. I'm being asked

by Maxim: who washes the writing off the mugs? Do you have

Navalny's cook? But a cook is supposed

to cook something. I can't say that I

personally wash the writing off the mug. Somehow

it works by itself. You come in and ask me

to write something on a mug, and I

say, "Write this and that," and then it

appears, apparently already with the inscription on it. And...

Patriarch

Kirill surprised us this week by

for the first time in many, many

years, he—well, a senior representative of the

Russian Orthodox Church—actually began, more or less,

to justify his wealth. The pressure of

public opinion over his

well, obvious non-

godly, non-Christian lifestyle,

Patriarch Kirill's lifestyle,

has become so great that

he has now had to say something

on the subject. It was quite interesting.

Let's listen—one minute and 15 seconds.

Patriarch Kirill urges people not to believe

that he has six billion

dollars. "When you read the most terrible

things about the patriarch, about bishops and

priests, remember that

there usually isn't even a drop of truth in them.

But all of this is aimed at

discrediting those who proclaim God's truth

so that people

stop listening and trusting. Once I was

simply astonished in a conversation with one

of the bishops. We were flying together from one

country to another; at the time he was serving abroad,

and he said to me in a brotherly way—we had

known each other for a long time—he said, 'Your Eminence,

please help us with money,

things are very difficult for us.'

I said, 'But we transfer money to you.' 'No, from your own

personal funds, please help.' I

tensed up—what do you mean, from my own funds? But

listen, they say he has six billion dollars.

I looked at him: 'Bishop, are you joking?'

'No.' So

this nonsense has reached the mind of a bishop—he believes

it.

So everything they say and write is most often

meant to make us stop speaking

God's truth.

There you go.

It's told almost like a joke, like, ha-ha-ha,

even some bishops believe it. But

whether Patriarch Kirill has six billion

dollars in personal assets, personal property,

I don't know. If he has one

billion dollars, I wouldn't doubt it. I just

I

haven't seen a bank statement, but

looking at what's going on around the ROC (Russian Orthodox Church),

looking at this ziggurat they've

built in the Moscow region, the so-called

military cathedral, for absolutely

unimaginable sums of money; looking at

the huge number of very specific,

strange, shady operations in

which the ROC is involved, which cannot be explained by anything

other than greed,

then

if they're enriching themselves, that means the money is there,

they're stashing it somewhere; if they're

stashing it away and so many

operations are taking place, then there is a lot of money there.

But it's good that he's trying to justify himself—

that means he does, after all, feel

the pressure from people, he feels the pressure

from the Orthodox community, to which many of

us belong—I belong to it too—and

I absolutely believe that the leaders of the ROC

need to be called out, they need

to have this beam in their eye pointed out to them, or

speck, or whatever you want to call it—we need to draw

attention to it, because the lives

these people lead are indeed super-luxurious.

But as for the truth they

say they speak—yes, he had a longer

speech there where

the patriarch says that all this

is being done to smear the Church, because

the Church also speaks rather

bravely—so bravely that it

even tells the authorities the truth. When I

heard that, I immediately

remembered—and I think you did too—that

wonderful video of Patriarch Kirill

speaking fearlessly and telling Putin the truth.

That looked very funny. 43

Patriarch Kirill is, in a matter of seconds, cutting in

to Putin’s face with the blunt truth. I must

say this completely openly, as someone

who is called to speak the truth without

paying attention either to political

expediency or to propagandistic

emphases.

About the fact that an enormous role in

correcting the crookedness of our history

was played personally by you, Vladimir Vladimirovich. I

would like to thank you. You

once said that you work like a

galley slave. It is worth

noting only one difference: a slave never had

such dedication, whereas

you have an extremely high output. I

with all boldness and directness, without any— you

know, I’ve really gathered myself and want to

Vladimir Vladimirovich, lick your

little boots, kiss your feet, and

say that you are the very, very, very, very

best in the world. Watching this is very

disgusting—very disgusting for everyone to watch,

for everyone in general, probably for believing Christians

to watch this; it is doubly disgusting.

But we all remember the watch incident,

when they were in one photograph

and then disappeared. And then there was the famous

story when the watch was photoshopped out, but

in another photograph you can still see the reflection

of the watch anyway. That is,

a completely

luxurious,

ostentatiously luxurious lifestyle

of the hierarchs

of the Russian Orthodox Church and

the top brass of the Russian Orthodox Church, and the insane

spending, and the obviously corrupt projects

like that very church outside Moscow

associated with Shoigu and Putin—these, of course,

caused so much outrage that

Kirill has been forced to make excuses. And

it is good that people are paying

attention to this. And if

we’re talking, by the way, about those people who

are forced to talk on television about

the wealth of Russians—there was not a funny

incident, but a sad one: a presenter was fired,

Alexandra Novikova, who worked at

GTRK Kamchatka, and you surely all

remember her—last year she gave us the most

memorable video,

with the most, most infectious

laughter. I’ve watched it many times, but every

time I watch it, I laugh along with

her. Let’s recall it: one minute 27

seconds. Indexation also affected the

set of social services included in the payment. From

February 1, its value will amount to just

over 1,500 rubles per month,

of which almost 900 rubles a beneficiary can

spend on necessary medications,

137 rubles can be allocated to

purchasing a voucher for a health resort stay to

prevent major illnesses,

and the remainder for free travel on

intercity transport to the place of treatment

and back. Excuse me. [laughter]

Live

[laughter]

[laughter]

[laughter]

on air—just

[laughter]

you simply can’t help laughing at this. The remaining

‘intercity transport’—did you hear that?

No, 137 is for, for

[laughter] the trip—no, for the health resort voucher.

The rest is for the intercity trip, all the way

to the place of rest and back, you understand?

1,500 rubles, of which 900 go to medications,

137, and the remaining

money—she laughs.

[laughter]

Alexandra Novikova—although while everyone

says the situation is sad, in fact for the people

who receive this subsidy for

intercity travel. But I suppose one can

congratulate her on no longer being

a presenter at GTRK Kamchatka, because she

organized a rally

in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in support

of Furgal. Good for her. I don’t know

exactly what political views Alexandra

holds, but she went ahead

while being an employee of federal

television in the region and organized

a rally in support of Furgal—that’s very cool.

Even if that meant her work in television

ended and she was fired. Well, here

you can’t exactly say we express support and

condolences—Alexandra, you got fired

from rotten, corrupt television, so

thank God. I hope she finds

some better use for herself. I saw somewhere

that Open Media later wrote

that she was even thinking of going into politics.

Well, there you go—let her run in

her hometown against

a United Russia candidate. I have no doubt that

she would be elected if she remains this kind of honest

and normal person; then she would probably

also get Smart Voting’s support.

As for salaries—yes, by the way, that was a funny

moment, but now we’ll move on to describing a really

rather sad thing, because

specialists from RIA Rating conducted

a very large study, a huge one,

and they calculated the real

median salary in Russia. The median

salary is a more accurate

indicator than the average salary in Russia.

It turned out that this very salary is

34

thousand 500 rubles

in 2020.

An oil-producing country that simply

also claims to be a great power.

What a great average salary we have: $476.

Dollars. Poverty,

and destitution — those are the two words that

describe both the Russian people and the state of

the Russian economy. A huge country,

with an enormous military budget, with

Patriarch Kirill (head of the Russian Orthodox Church), which

claims it doesn’t have $6 billion.

Surely there’s at least one person with

some of these palaces, Foreign Ministry

vineyards, bears, the second-largest

number of billionaires in the world after the U.S.,

billionaires.

All the most expensive yachts in the world

belong to Russian citizens. A large share of

the most elite real estate in London

is bought by Russian officials, and the average

salary in the country is $476.

Dollars. Less than in Romania, much

less than in the Baltic states. These people have truly

driven the country not just into poverty —

if you have $476, you’re not

destitute, you can eat and put

500 rubles (about $7) on your mobile phone,

but that’s not what we would want

to aspire to in 2020. This is absolutely not

what our country deserves. This is

absolutely not what people can reasonably

expect when they have an education. But

we’re not living in Africa — everyone here is

literate, there are huge numbers of

people with higher education. People

finished school and know how to, I don’t know, solve

integrals. A significant number of

people, at least, still remember them from school.

They haven’t forgotten those integrals. We have

an educated population, we have

some industry left — and yet it’s $476

a month, 34,500 rubles a month.

And again,

I’ll repeat it three times on today’s program:

until hundreds of thousands and millions

of people take to the streets and this government is not

brought down — I’m saying it plainly — nothing

will change. We will go on

languishing in this poverty, in this same

report it says that rising

inflation in the foreseeable future will

eat away at these miserable 34,000

rubles, and at this, excuse me, accelerating

pace, the whole nation will grow poorer. Real

incomes continue to fall,

fall and fall, prices are rising, and in that

sense these miserable 34,000

rubles will become less and

less and less, because this

government is incapable of doing

anything to raise people’s incomes. And this

isn’t just my opinion — it’s

verified empirical experience going back to 2013.

Since 2013, for seven straight years, incomes

have been falling. The government can do

absolutely nothing, and it will not do

absolutely anything now, just as

Lukashenko can do nothing, just as they can do

nothing in Zimbabwe or in

North Korea. Until power changes,

there will be no positive changes

at all. Well, on that note, let’s move on

to Khabarovsk — there are a lot of questions here

about Khabarovsk. What

will happen there in Khabarovsk? Medvedev’s statements

about the need to take into account

the supporters of Furgal, about Solovyov’s joke —

our regular listener Solovyov, so to speak,

Solovyov, that is.

There are also a lot of questions about Degtyaryov,

about our

new investigation. But Khabarovsk

has frozen at a kind of equilibrium point. That is,

it surged, it put itself at the center

of attention, and

the situation has to be resolved, and now

Putin is sitting and waiting for everything there to

die down, while we’re all waiting for

something to happen there — I don’t know, for it to erupt

or for the federal authorities to give in. And who will

outlast whom in stubbornness: the people of Khabarovsk or

the federal authorities, who for now

are showing zero desire to make

any kind of compromise? For now, Khabarovsk, to the

credit of this wonderful city, is

not giving up. Every Saturday we watch

their rally there. Every

Saturday at 12 noon there is a large

rally, and every single day at 7 p.m.

on weekdays there is a smaller

rally. And this time there was

an absolute downpour, very bad

weather, and it was already quite cold in Khabarovsk.

Nevertheless, there was once again a huge demonstration.

Everyone is marching and shouting: we’re coming, we’ll put an end to Putin —

we don’t need him. Nine seconds from Khabarovsk.

A huge

march took place — look at the vivid

photos, it was like an umbrella march. But we

conducted a poll right there at this

rally, and it

from the point of view of sociological science

is not very representative, but

for measuring at least

the mood of the people who are taking to the

streets, it’s quite good. We decided not to

publish it, because we are still very

careful about making sure our

sociology is done strictly by all the rules

of sociology. But I can tell you that

there, an overwhelming

majority —

let me remember exactly — something like 80

percent of people say that these

fines, pressure, arrests, and other

things

have not changed their position, and they will

either keep coming out, or be even more

confirmed in their view that they need

to take to the streets. So Khabarovsk is not

giving up. It is very important to express support for it.

We’re not seeing solidarity protests in support.

We’re not seeing rallies spread on a mass scale

to other regions, although in Siberia and the Far

East we do see fairly large

demonstrations of support. I explain this

by the fact that these are, of course, still very much

local issues. Everyone sympathizes

with Khabarovsk. Everyone understands. Polls have shown

that the majority of Russians, Russians

support the Khabarovsk residents’ demands, but any

kind of mass rallies—I don’t know, probably

shouldn’t be expected across

the whole country anytime soon. But this Khabarovsk

vendetta is continuing, and what’s interesting is that the authorities

probably seem to think that just

a little longer and people will leave the streets, because

they’re behaving, of course, more and more

brazenly. And now Degtyarev has already

—it would seem this man ought to

keep quiet, but no.

This video wasn’t very popular on

social media, but I want to show you 28 seconds

of it.

So, they brought him this

tractor, and Degtyarev walks around

it and says that all of

this is thanks to Putin, or thanks to

the local officials. Twenty-eight seconds of praising

Putin. Here.

This is important, you know. These tractors under the federal

project—these are

not some glorious local administration effort, yes, this

was Vladimir Putin, making the decision

under the federal project, who sent tractors like these

to the regions for restoration

work. For some reason, no one here likes

to talk about this in Khabarovsk Krai. Three

tractors, you understand. And he’s singing the praises

of Vladimir Vladimirovich in such a way that

you’d think Vladimir Vladimirovich paid out of his own pocket, or, I

don’t know, built the tractor himself or stole it from

the Americans in Ukraine, grabbed a tractor

and hauled it across the border and gifted it

to the people of Khabarovsk, and now they’re supposed to bow

at his feet. These tractors were bought with tax money,

including the taxes of the people who

live and work in Khabarovsk Krai. But still,

it would seem Degtyarev should have kept quiet

so as not to anger people, but apparently he somehow

feels secure in his position. The LDPR, by the way,

has already said that they

will indeed nominate him for the gubernatorial

election. But if Furgal is not allowed to run

—although it’s clear that Furgal will either

be released under public pressure, or that

won’t happen, and then there definitely will be an election, and

then they’ll put forward Degtyarev. I’ll be

interested to see whether they try

to make him governor. We’re doing what we can

to contribute to making sure that behind this

this lying,

disgusting politician, our

investigation came out. It was released last

Thursday; I told you about it on Friday.

Degtyarev responded to us, and we immediately

responded to him as well. It seems to me that we

have, in that sense, finally

buried him. But first, let’s watch

a minute and a half of Degtyarev

explaining that the remarkable house and

apartments that appeared in his

parents’ possession after he took part

in all sorts of schemes are somehow perfectly

normal, and that they sold everything in Samara and bought

real estate in Moscow. A popular

question: Mikhail, please comment

on Navalny’s investigation—what is

that little house in the Moscow suburbs?

Yes, it’s a great little house. I like it there, I

miss it. That’s the house where my

parents live, who

sold all the property they had accumulated over their entire

lives. Just so you know, my father is

71

years old.

They worked [music] abroad a lot.

That’s where we started. So, having sold everything,

they built a house in the Moscow suburbs; there

they live and help raise their grandchildren. We regularly

bring them there—or used to, yes.

And what else is there to discuss? I looked at it—

nothing interesting, as always, numbers pulled

out of thin air. But the facts are true: yes, there is a house,

there are apartments [music], only—well,

to hell with it, let’s get back to the business at hand.

As for where it came from, I should probably

answer that jab: the house has an extension

that hasn’t been registered yet, because it’s still

unfinished. As soon as it’s completed,

my father—he’s been dealing with it for quite a long time—

there’s still finishing work going on there.

[music] There’s never enough money, as always. Once it

is finished, it will be registered, just like

all Russian citizens do. Let’s get back to business.

To the affairs of Khabarovsk Krai, which concern us

far more than—what is this—

some real estate in the Moscow suburbs. First of all,

notice that they said it was the most

popular question, so well done

to everyone asking it. Second,

what a disgusting lackey this host is.

Good Lord. “Ah, to hell with it, let’s

get back to the issues that

interest our people in Khabarovsk more than

some house in the Moscow suburbs.” A house in the

Moscow suburbs belonging to the governor

of Khabarovsk Krai—and this journalist is on the take.

This journalist is bought and paid for, just

disgusting.

A vile, miserable lackey—just, my God.

Where did he even come from? They just sent this

Degtyarev over, and already he’s ready

to throw himself at his feet and practically lick

his boots.

Disgusting. In that sense, this kind of

pro-government journalism is just

disgusting. These people are the worst people in the world,

worse than the officials themselves, I mean.

Degtyarev, who lies in absolutely every

word—even he looks a little better

than this nasty Khabarovsk

journalist—"journalist," in quotation marks. But it's great

that Degtyarev said all this. And he, well, by

he's a member of the LDPR, of course, but essentially, by

his nature, he's a United Russia man. He's a former United Russia member, but

he's a former member of the youth movement

of United Russia, Walking Together—remember, there was

such a movement in support of Putin—then

he was in United Russia itself. He lies

very easily, without thinking about

the consequences. And Georgy Alburov, who

was, in fact, the author of the main

investigation, immediately called him out—come here,

Degtyarev—and systematically proved that

Degtyarev is lying. Well, you understand, in

principle, his lie was obvious

to anyone—the idea that you could

sell real estate in Samara and buy

real estate in Moscow—well, let's just say, that

its implausibility is obvious to pretty much

anyone who has any idea

how much real estate costs in the regions and

that even in the very best region, the amount of

real estate there is nothing like Moscow. But

here are 57 seconds from Georgy Alburov that

completely destroy the acting

governor of Khabarovsk Krai

Degtyarev. He claims that this

part of the house isn't finished. OK, let's open

the satellite images from 2015. Here

the main part of the house is being built, which

is now officially registered, and this is the very

same supposedly unfinished extension. 2016:

a roof appears here and there. 2017:

a lawn appears, and any traces of

construction disappear altogether. 2018:

everything is already taking shape, and

there's a pond and another structure, and since then, over

the past two years, absolutely nothing has changed.

Let's look at this extension from

our drone. No matter which side we

look from—this one, that one, or from

this side—there are no signs whatsoever

of construction, not the slightest. The answer

is simple: all of this is finished and not

registered purely for petty

fraudulent reasons. They found 70 million rubles for

the extension, but paying the proper amount of taxes for all this

was beneath Degtyarev.

That's too low for him. I condemn

Georgy for using that word, but

still, it's wonderful that

Degtyarev already understood that we had

video footage—at least of his

statement, the second part of the statement that

Alburov refuted. And as for his claim that construction was still

ongoing and that's why it wasn't being registered, we

will refute that with video, because it clearly shows

that there has been no construction there for many years.

It's a completed building. If you don't

register it because you don't want

to pay taxes, that's still bad, because

he's still a United Russia man. But still, the first part

of Georgy's rebuttal, where he

systematically proves that it couldn't

possibly be the case that you sold something in

Samara and bought something in Moscow, because

in Samara they not only did not

sell—they actually bought even more. The most

important thing Degtyarev says is that

his parents simply sold all their

property and used the proceeds

to build a house outside Moscow. Let me

first clarify that all of his parents' property

was in Samara, and I decided

to take a close look at how many Samara

apartments they would have had to sell in order to buy the plot

and begin construction of a thousand-square-meter

house two kilometers from the MKAD (Moscow Ring Road). The

correct answer is: zero Samara apartments.

The plot was bought in October 2013,

one month after Degtyarev took part

in the Moscow mayoral election as

a minor helper to Sergei Sobyanin, and

the first apartment in Samara was sold in

October 2014—that is, one year

after the plot was purchased and construction

had begun. This is what the plot looked like in

2014: the house foundation had been laid and construction was in full

swing. So what was this, you might ask,

some kind of golden apartment in Samara that

made such a large-scale

70-million-ruble project possible? At 78 square meters, it was

a completely unremarkable apartment in

a Samara building constructed in 1990.

The upper price limit for such an apartment in

2014 was 5 million rubles at most.

The thing is, Degtyarev's family not only did not

sell all their property in Samara to

build the house—they actually bought more in

2016, when active

construction of the house outside Moscow was underway. They

bought a 100-square-meter apartment in Samara in

a newly built residential complex

called Historical Quarter, and this apartment cost

at least 8 million rubles.

I

am very glad that our

Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF) made some

small contribution—now everyone knows

that Degtyarev is not just some strange

loudmouth and windbag, but also a corrupt official and a liar

who lies directly to the residents of Khabarovsk

and to the whole rest of the country. I looked—well, I won't

try to predict whether he'll get elected, but nevertheless

for now, meanwhile, Governor Furgal

is sitting in Lefortovo, in that kind of

detention center where he is as much as possible

deprived of access to any information. Members of the

Public Monitoring Commission visited him, and his

peace of mind—well, look, an interview with him came out in

Moskovsky Komsomolets; it's worth reading.

There Furgal simply describes what kind of

absolute lawlessness he is facing. They don't even

pass on letters from his relatives to him. He has been sitting there

for a long time already—more than three

For weeks, there hasn’t been a single letter there, just

nothing for him from anyone—not a note from a loved one,

nothing from relatives or children is being

passed on. The man has been plunged into complete

isolation, and on top of that, in Lefortovo (a high-security Moscow prison)

it is now practically impossible to get in there.

Lawyers hardly get to meet with him at all, and

the letters don’t just go through Lefortovo’s own censorship

department—they also go through the investigators,

and absolutely nothing is being given to him. But this

is also indirect confirmation

that he bears no guilt whatsoever—well, truly none.

If there were any

evidence that he really

took part in criminal groups

or was involved in murder, they would have

dumped that evidence on us long ago,

and Furgal himself

would have been given some chance

to defend himself, the way Degtyarev did,

and they would have rebutted his arguments,

or at least issued denials from the standpoint

of PR. But that isn’t happening. Why?

Because there is no evidence at all.

The case was entirely made up by Trutnev, as I

explained in my video. Trutnev, on

Putin’s orders, fabricated this criminal case crudely, absurdly,

and stupidly. That’s why

we are now—and that’s why things turned out this way.

Everyone from Khabarovsk asks me, as Savelyev does,

the same key question:

for more than three weeks now,

people in Khabarovsk have been coming out to protest, but

nothing is happening, and the authorities are not

reacting at all. What should they do next? This

really is the main question

everyone is asking themselves. But let’s

simply proceed from experience.

Experience

shows that this

government does something only when it senses

that there is some real threat or

that there will be a real shift in public

opinion. From that point of view, the people of Khabarovsk

need to hold out as long as possible and

keep coming out, because time, on the one

hand, works against them, because

they have to come out every Saturday,

every Sunday—they need to keep going and going and

going. On the other hand, we can see that

through our joint efforts, more and more people

in the country know

about what is happening in Khabarovsk. The more

people know, the more people in

Khabarovsk—the more Khabarovsk residents

will be supported. This all needs to be politicized as strongly as possible

so that for Putin the threat is not simply

that he gets asked about Khabarovsk,

that people ask him about Khabarovsk and he

has to say something in response,

or that they say, well, they’re making noise again in Khabarovsk.

The threat has to look like this:

the more people in Khabarovsk go to

rallies, the lower your chances become

of getting someone elected governor in

other regions. The more people there, the

longer they keep protesting in their Khabarovsk,

the lower the probability that even a candidate from

United Russia will be able to win for real.

You’ll have to falsify the results everywhere.

That is political threat number

one. We have the example of Shiyes (a station in Arkhangelsk Region), where

in Arkhangelsk Region, as I have already

said several times, it seemed

the situation was absolutely hopeless. After all,

it wasn’t even Khabarovsk—it was way out in the middle of nowhere,

just this station, and there was some kind of

tent camp there. But nevertheless,

the previous governor was removed because

the whole country—because they monitored it all,

United Russia, Putin, all these polls—they monitored

everything and realized that all of this

was being supported, and the confrontation itself

was working against the authorities. So they, at

least as of today, have

announced

that there will be no construction there.

So in a sense they fulfilled the protesters’

demands. In Khabarovsk, things are still

more complicated, but there, on the other hand, you have an entire city.

So the strategy can only be

this: long, tedious, and difficult, but

to keep going.

Stay there, politicize the demands,

spread information. Second, well, I

believe—and our poll showed this; I mentioned it here

just now, there are 71,000 people watching us live—that

for those who didn’t see it, I

said that we conducted a poll of those who

actually come out to the rallies in

Khabarovsk about methods of struggle going

forward, and they say

that strikes, walkouts—they support them there,

up to 30 percent of people do.

[clears throat] In that sense, all methods

of peaceful protest—a citywide

strike, for example—are hard to organize, and

to be honest, it’s not clear how exactly

to organize one. The last time

there were strikes—well, miners staged some

small ones in the 1990s, and before that

strikes were a major social phenomenon. But

nevertheless, it is possible—and necessary—to try.

Strikes, blockading buildings,

coming out and not dispersing—in that sense,

the protest can also be escalated.

Of course, one can say: well, you’re advising all this

because you’re sitting in Moscow, not

in Khabarovsk. Of course that’s true,

absolutely true. Any

escalation carries the risk of some larger

confrontation. But we can see that the authorities

have already started jailing people anyway.

They arrested one person, then two, then three, then ten,

and their strategy is precisely this creeping

erosion of the protest: to wait until everyone

gets tired of it. So it is necessary, well,

it is necessary to keep coming out. I once suggested that they should...

At one of the rallies in Moscow, I said

that I still support

this phrase. I believe that this is exactly how it should be

done, although many people did not like it. I was told

that this kind of message means, basically,

demotivation. But until we start

going to rallies as if they were our job, nothing

will change. So as long as they are happening,

we need to go to them every evening, every

Saturday and every Sunday, as if going to

work, because that is your job

in freeing the country from a gang of crooks

and, among other things, because your salary

would be higher. If the average salary now is

34,000 rubles, then it will stay at that level

or become even lower because of Putin

until we remove Putin and United

Russia from power, salaries will not rise

If you want a higher salary, go to rallies, and

dear Russian, this applies to me as well

Well, all right, for me this means

you protest, you get locked up, you protest, you get locked up, well

I do it anyway: you protest for 17

days, you sit in jail. They wanted to see you protest for a month

and sit for a month, but there is no other way anyway

there is no other way, and we understand that very well

Apparently, this brings me to another point:

Putin has already become afraid of us

and his enormous fear for himself and for the party

United Russia is visible even now, ahead of these

elections that will take place on September 13

I mean, you would think these elections

are something hardly anyone knows about, and we all

more or less do not care about them. It's like,

Navalny is running around like a madman shouting

"Smart Voting, Smart Voting"

Look at the two main regions. This one here,

Arkhangelsk Region, where

they changed the governor there, removed

the unpopular one and put in another person

who, well, does not seem to have been involved in anything

bad, but they nominated

a candidate from Shiyes, Oleg Mandrykin, and he

even collected signatures and passed

the municipal filter, but then they still

said, "We will not let him run," and

did not

let him. They removed the doctor from the ballot because

they understand, Putin understands, that in

Arkhangelsk Region, if there is

a candidate who is, so to speak, a candidate of the people,

he will simply win, one hundred percent

It is impossible there for any

United Russia candidate to win, so they remove him from the election. In

Komi, it is the same. In Komi, protest sentiment is very high

there. There was a fairly strong candidate there

Mikhailov, from the Communist Party, and you

understand, how can you remove

a Communist candidate? He definitely had

plenty of municipal signatures. They removed him from

the election because otherwise they cannot win

Putin is very afraid. This is

fear. We can even see that they are so afraid of Smart

Voting that right now

they have started rushing to remove candidates. Here in

Nizhny Novgorod

it is just total lawlessness. But

at first they seemed to start registering them

then they removed all independent candidates from

the election because they understand they will lose

It is very funny

and not funny at all. Then comes the explanation of why they were removed

That is, you submit signature sheets

and then some handwriting expert

is supposed to give you a summary table in which

the data are, like, here is the real data

and here are your data, and your data do not

match the real data from the GAS Vybory system

Now let us look at what kind of

table they produced in Nizhny Novgorod

Look, this is not a joke. What do you think

what data can be verified using this

table? First of all, this is called nonsense

second, this is called something illegal

third, this is called outright mockery

public, demonstrative mockery

and, of course, it is also called fear

because we will sweep Putin out

Putin and United Russia in

Nizhny Novgorod can simply be thrown out just like that with

the help of Smart Voting. They

understand this, and they do not allow candidates to run. But

just because they did not let someone onto the ballot there

does not mean anyone here should skip the election or refuse

to take part in Smart Voting

overall motivation may drop, which is understandable

Ladies and gentlemen, with the help of Smart

Voting, we support the strongest

candidate, the one who has a one-hundred-percent chance of winning

As we saw in the example of Moscow, with

the help of Smart Voting, we can back not just

a weak candidate, but even a technical spoiler, a look-alike candidate

Remember the famous Solovyov look-alike?

We even got a look-alike elected as a deputy

some completely random person, just so long as

it was not a United Russia candidate. That happens too, but

that is more complicated. So they are simply

very afraid and will

keep trying somehow

to remove candidates. In Voronezh, they removed

a candidate. Twenty seconds from Voronezh: our

coordinator there, Yevgeny Karpov,

talks about how he too was removed over

signatures. I think that if we do eventually

start speaking up instead of staying silent

as voters, and defend our interests

rather than those of the Central Election Commission

then probably

our children in the future will be able

to choose candidates for themselves, rather than from the one

that someone else offers them. This is just

awful

Yes, do you understand, we are already saying that our children

will be able to choose whatever candidates they want

rather than the ones from the United Russia party. And in order

for that to happen, that is exactly why

we need to protest and we need to make

some effort, because they are very

They’re very afraid. Now I’m going to move on to

a discussion of Belarus, and everything that’s happening there

it

is very—well, it’s simply

boiling over much more intensely there now, but the roots

are roughly the same: both Putin and

Lukashenko understand that they cannot win elections

fairly, and all they have left

is to cheat. In Izhevsk they removed

them, in Voronezh they removed them, in Nizhny they removed them, in

some regions they’re still there, and that’s exactly why

it’s so important to help those who

are still in the race. We have some in Tomsk, and there are also

candidates in Cheboksary, there’s Semyon Kochkin

in Novosibirsk. Of the cities that

are taking part in the elections right now, Novosibirsk is the

largest city. Please go there, wherever

you live, to the website nsk2020.ru

if you want to help. Find the candidates there,

they’re listed there. You can, through the app

Sberbank Online, very conveniently donate

money to the candidates—I’ve tried it myself. Go there,

support them informationally, even if you don’t

live in Novosibirsk—and if you do, all the more so.

This is very important because this

fear Putin has of losing must be

implemented.

He should lose, and in order for

him to understand that his country no longer

supports him, and so that we

understand it better—though you and I already understand it. The people

around us who sit there endlessly

repeating this line: how can Putin

be defeated, there’s nothing we can do, this

wall can’t be broken through—you can bang your head against it all you like,

but you can’t break a concrete wall.

There is no concrete wall, no concrete

wall at all. If just 3 percent

of the active population, 3 percent, would

get to work—namely, go to rallies,

take part in voting—then that’s it, there would be no

Putin regime in

half a year. It’s just that we ourselves so often

don’t believe in our own strength, and we

need some victories and successes to

simply reassure ourselves of our own power, and that

is very important to do now, on the eve of

the September 13 regional elections.

Belarus. The photograph

of a person

with binoculars standing on a chair—what does it mean?

Show the photograph: a person with

binoculars on a chair, there’s such a photo.

This is probably the best symbol of what

is happening right now in

the Republic of Belarus.

Early voting has begun there [clears throat],

and already now the early

voting is being totally falsified, but

that’s their main instrument, really,

for falsification,

which Lukashenko constantly uses. And

now Putin, who always does what

Lukashenko does, is beginning

to use it in Russia too. In Belarus,

it’s considered normal when in early

voting 35 percent of people have supposedly voted,

and all 35 percent of those people supposedly

voted for Lukashenko. And that’s it,

the outcome of the election is effectively decided.

I’ve already written down the figures for how many

they have there already, right now,

they already have more than seven—around 7

percent. And these poor observers

aren’t being allowed into

polling stations, they’re being thrown out of polling stations, they’re being

arrested there. The only way

to observe in Belarus now is to

stand under the windows with binoculars.

If you think this is just some

curious photo I showed you

of a guy with binoculars on a chair—no, it isn’t.

Show the video: here’s another similar

observer, not even looking through a window in front of a school,

but standing behind a fence, having to watch from there.

Please show it, here.

He’s standing behind the fence, looking through binoculars,

because that’s the only possible

way to monitor

anything at all. That’s what it has come to there.

And that is our future if we do not

go out into the streets. And there, well, you can

simply count the people who

enter the school grounds, and already now

it’s clear that turnout is inflated by about

two and a half times. Show the protocol

that I saw: first one observer

received

one—one of the few observers managed to get in after all—and

on Tuesday evening he received a protocol.

You see, it says 36 people on it, but in the

morning he gets another protocol, and in it

it’s already 96 people. That’s how elections work

in Belarus. But if you say to that:

ours work more or less the same way too,

well, yes, in our country they work like that in Chechnya,

they work like that in Tatarstan, in

Mordovia too. But, for example, in Tomsk

or in Novosibirsk, or in Khabarovsk,

they still work a little differently.

In Belarus it varies from precinct to precinct

much less—it happens there totally, and that’s why

they’re hounding observers. There are already about

ten people arrested; they’ve received from 6

to 10 days of arrest. Why? Because

simply—because they tried, they

said: how can this be, we’re observers, you do not

have the right to remove us from polling stations. And for that—

ten days, off you go. But the main thing

is that no one believes anymore

that Lukashenko can win, much less

win with his favorite result of

85 percent. And Belarus is now

now at—well, I [clears throat]

don’t know if it’s the home stretch; it’s the

home stretch from the standpoint of the election,

but at a major crossroads in terms of

what happens next, because

the authorities, represented by the president and by

the ministers and so on, they

have demonstrated, first of all, madness

and second, madness in terms of

declaring outright the method: that we will

basically disperse all of you to hell, even

stylistically, it looks, it looks

of course, pathetic, well

and then there is this thing Putin is always

telling these stories of his about how

well,

we are the most stable country around,

there is poverty all around, and we are an island of stability, and

we are also respected in the world. Well, that is complete

nonsense, but at least you can tell

people at home this crap that the time has come

for the world to respect us; before, they did not respect us, and

now, thanks to Putin, they do. But

Lukashenko is saying roughly the same

thing. One minute and 28 seconds from his, from his

rather emotional hour-and-a-half speech

delivered entirely in the style

of the Soviet Union, Soviet

space. For decades we have been unable

to resolve a whole mass of frozen conflicts

in Transnistria

the Caucasian tangle of contradictions, the Armenian

Azerbaijani conflict. Moreover,

we got Ukraine as well, and now

on this geopolitical fault line today

stands Belarus, the only

calm

link in the center of Eurasia, living

by its own mind. That is why today it is being torn apart

Now

a few words about reforms and change.

The call

by the opposition to bring about change

through a return to the principles of the 1990s and to restore

the 1994 Constitution

is a gift to criminals.

The path of destroying everything to the ground and then

is not our path. The Belarusian people have had enough of revolutions and destruction

in the last century.

Will Belarus endure? Will it be able to withstand

this hybrid clash, this war? Those who

do not understand: if the Belarusians fall,

they will be next, all of them.

The poisoned arrows today are aimed

at Lukashenko.

Literally.

They literally repeat it. All these

former CPSU functionaries

who, after the collapse of the USSR,

seized power and turned up as presidents, wherever

they happened to be—in Russia, in

Belarus, somewhere in Turkmenistan, in

Azerbaijan, in Uzbekistan, in Kazakhstan—

it is all the same: supposedly, we have the most

stable country, Lukashenko is the only

island in Eurasia, supposedly. Well, of course,

because in Switzerland, in France, in Portugal,

in Germany, the whole population there is just

jealous, damn it, dreaming of ending up in

stable Belarus, the envy of all Eurasia.

You see, people in South Korea who

earn salaries ten times higher than in

Belarus would of course give that up

for the happiness of being led by

Alexander Grigoryevich Lukashenko. But he

says the same thing with complete seriousness.

All this [__] about

how we have exhausted our quota for revolution

literally—they say this literally. And those

who want change, they supposedly want to take us back

to the cursed '90s—literally. This whole gang

of crooks from the CPSU, this kind of authoritarian

international, literally repeats the same

thing. And all these, their whole clique,

or whatever you want to call them, these

faces sitting there in some kind of

Column Hall of the House of the Unions (a historic Moscow venue),

naturally, they will applaud, because

they are close to the trough; they understand that

their ability to steal is tied

only to their authoritarian leader, wherever

that may be—in Belarus, in Russia, in

Kazakhstan, anywhere. It is all the same: with

that leader is connected the possibility

to steal. That is why they support him, and

that is why for two and a half minutes

they stood and gave a standing ovation. I

watched it and thought: this is straight out of

my childhood. I will not show the full two and a half minutes,

but let us watch 30 seconds of it.

They are applauding not a beloved one, but the beloved one, and

giving it away.

And so

with those stone faces, they really did stand there for two

and a half minutes and just

clapped their hands like this. Look at their faces.

It is because everyone is genuinely in shock. First of all,

everyone understands very well

the public mood. Second, well, in front of

you stands a president saying: this

beloved, beloved—I do not know—this beloved

this country, this country in which

people live, and those people are supposed to choose all

authority. There are observers, there is some kind of

procedure. What does 'beloved' even mean? He simply

went and appropriated a country of 10 million

people, and well

I just

when

watched it, I of course very much felt like

I was back in my Soviet childhood, in that

Young Pioneer organization, all of it—it was just

so similar. Let me just not

deny myself the pleasure: 24 seconds

of how it was. But when Alexan

der Grigoryevich Lukashenko had only just joined the

CPSU, the words were:

for centuries, the heroic

Soviet people

There is this senile fool speaking, and the same kind of

people in various medals stand there and clap, and

at the same time everyone understands: my God, this is

insanity, this is some kind of nonsense.

it’s happening, but people are against it, and people

are getting poorer, and nobody wants that, but there he is

just keeps pushing ahead, and that’s why every time it’s very

interesting how this works in principle, well

there it is: the king is naked. What is the support based on?

What is it holding on to? Nothing, not popular

support either, but still this inertia

is structured in such a way that once this

whole congress thinks, damn, this is still, this is

some kind of total trash, everyone is standing and clapping

and clapping and clapping, and somehow

it keeps going and keeps going and keeps going and

keeps going, but this time actually there

really

really

quite unambiguously

the authorities, understanding that there will be no voting

for them anymore, and that the actual

result of the vote will not be one

that Lukashenko will be able to publicly, as it were,

announce, or even if they stage some large

percentages and hold a second round, yes, he cannot

simply allow himself to declare that

well, Tsikhanouskaya made it to the second round

and so they are sending out in advance

the interior minister, who simply does not

talk about legality, but comes out and

says that a difficult task lies ahead

morally and physically, and also

promises support in advance to all

police officers who will be beating people

let’s listen. Dear

colleagues, officers of the internal affairs

bodies and servicemen of the internal troops

of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, for more than a quarter of a century we have lived in a

stable, dynamically developing

state whose priorities are

the well-being of the people

a peace-loving

foreign policy and national

security. On August 9, the election

for the President of the Republic of Belarus will take place

This most important socio-political

event will become not only another milestone

in the development of the sovereign country, but also

a serious test of the resilience of the entire

law enforcement system

There lie ahead

significant psychological and

physical strains. Right now

on the internet and on city streets we

are observing active provocative

activity by certain citizens. You have been given

the right to act on behalf of the state

to protect the interests of citizens and their lives, and

remember: in carrying out your official duties

you may count on the protection of your

rights and lawful interests

We are the united body of the Belarusian police

and will do everything so that the election passes calmly

and without complications. This is

a direct declaration, you understand, by the minister

of internal affairs, and in that kind of voice, as if

as if, I don’t know, declaring war, as if

this were not an election, but actually

something like that

and that they will become not only a milestone, but also

a serious test. And why will they become

a serious test? You could simply

announce the result as people

actually voted, and there would be no test

at all, and the personnel could stay in

their apartments, I don’t know, drink beer at home, but

they understand that there will be a serious

test because on the ninth

— Sunday — there will be voting. As I understand it,

they do not want to announce

the result on the 9th; for that they’ll use the 10th and

announce a completely fabricated result, and

that result will satisfy no one, and the Interior Ministry

is for, well, let’s go out and start

I don’t know, beating these people and

dispersing these people who are demanding

a normal, simple thing: just fair

elections. And yet they are called

provocateurs — these truly

normal, wonderful people who

are ready to go out into some forest just

to take part in a rally for a candidate

who is simply the wife of the real candidate

and there are also three women there, you’ll hear about

them — all of them are great. These are people who

didn’t even become candidates intentionally, but rather by chance, and yet

simply because such a huge number

of people are not ready to put up with it, so they, well,

are literally going into the forest, where, by the way,

when I heard that they were

holding a rally in the forest, I thought, my God,

how much Belarus resembles Russia. In

that same Saransk, as was already mentioned here,

Governor Merkushkin — I remember when I

was holding a meeting with voters, we were not

given a single venue at all, and one

of our supporters had

a small plot of land there, about a 20-minute drive

from the city — literally just a field and a forest — and

we took a bus and brought people there

because in the city it was impossible

to meet, and now exactly the same thing is happening

absolutely the same. Earlier they

used to give Tsikhanouskaya the most miserable

venues, and then even those venues started to be

taken away, with them saying that here

there are repairs going on, here children are performing, and

here we have little sailors dancing, but in

Brest I saw a rally where, in

the literal sense, it was in a forest. Let’s

look — in 52 seconds — at how many people

gathered for a rally in the forest

to support candidate Tsikhanouskaya

who supposedly is only the wife

of the real candidate, but, by the way,

has already become a real candidate herself. We need

ourselves, our desires, and our

persistence

to go out

to stand, write, speak, vote

to observe, to express

to hammer away

either

we stay where we are, and then even more awaits us

more crisis, or we give it everything we've got

we fight and make the dream of the last 25 years come true

of the last 25 years: we

want a new country—a free

and happy Belarus. Well,

she is, of course, a real candidate now,

I mean, it's just an astonishing fate for

a person—she seemed to be at that point

where it's very hard to stand, and she truly became

a real candidate who united

literally the whole nation, united everyone

really, this is a normal path into a new

future—for change, for simply

not living in insanity, because what

is happening now is, of course, absurd

absolutely illegal actions, so to speak

They had a rally in Soligorsk, and they

were given a venue—they could hold it

without any provocations, of course

but at that venue they suddenly started urgently changing

the sewage system. How many times has this happened at our

rallies? And the people who come

at the start are simply detained

let's watch that clip, 12 seconds

what

you

you'll see the same thing: faces covered

dragging someone away somewhere—so this is what they

want to build a country on? What for—this

'island of stability,' the best country in

Eurasia? Seriously? Because if you have

the best country in Eurasia, do you really need to

cover faces like this and drag

someone away in Minsk? As a matter of fact, right

now events are unfolding there. They were supposed to

have a very, very large rally

in Minsk. Naturally, they were allocated

a very inconvenient venue, but when

the authorities realized that a lot of

people would come, they announced that at that venue

there would be some kind of concert for

Railway Troops Day

and, moreover, railway troops in

Belarus supposedly don't really exist at all—it's some kind of

small brigade—and yet they're holding some kind of

concert. Naturally, they started

building something and laying some tracks. Tikhanovsky's team

was forced to cancel this

rally, because that's exactly what they wanted

—so they could say, basically,

'let's bring people in anyway' and provoke something

'you ruined our wonderful'

'railway workers' holiday.' They issued

a statement—the three remarkable women

saying that they were moving it to

Kyiv Square. Let's take a look. Hello,

Minsk friends, unfortunately we have

received an official refusal to hold

the rally in Friendship of Peoples Park

therefore, at 7:00 p.m. we will go to Kyiv

Square. There is an open day for institutions

of supplementary education

called 'Kaleidoscope of Creativity,' which

is organized by the city authorities. We will be

there, we will be together. See you there. And in the

end, they sent everyone to Kyiv

Square. What is happening in Kyiv Square

Why am I telling this in such detail?

Because I want to end the program

with this video, which literally

arrived just before the program began

and it also seemed very symbolic to me

of what is happening there. There is

an official event of some kind

an official children's celebration

so there is an official stage

there are sound technicians who are supposed to

play music for these children, but this

official setup—and then ordinary people simply started gathering

ordinary people, and then

these sound guys just went ahead and

played Tsoi's song 'Changes,' which

of course in Russia nowadays people tend to treat a bit

ironically, perhaps, or

they're simply tired of it because it's played all the time

endlessly. But in Belarus, to do

that now—if you work somewhere as a sound

technician, you see that people have come and

instead of some children's song

you go ahead and blast out the song 'We are waiting for

changes'—that's a major act. Let's

watch and listen

today, as I saw, the last day

Well, you see, that's one way to act—to make

a civic gesture. It's this kind of

seemingly small thing—that the staff of the Palace

of Youth went ahead and played this song—that is

simply, but also in some sense, directly

powerful

a hope that not everyone necessarily has to

be afraid. Yes, you may be fired from this Palace

of Youth, but your whole future life

that lies ahead is still more important than

whether you keep working in this

palace all your life, doing

what amounts to working for

a dictator, and then for his children, and then

for his grandchildren, and so on and so forth. That is

far worse than making a brave move

and trying in some way to help your country

As I wrap up the program, I wish all citizens

of Belarus success in the upcoming election. I

know it will be a difficult situation, and we all hope

that events

will develop peacefully, that the forces of good

will prevail, and

that the citizens of Belarus will finally get

the chance to choose for themselves the government

they want, and to move in the direction

they want to go, and no one will

order them around. Thank you very much, see you

next Thursday

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