Furgal’s arrest, the Ivan Safronov case, Putin against the rainbow

[music]

Good evening, everyone. It's exactly eight o'clock in Moscow,

which means we're live on air

with your favorite program, *Russia of the Future*,

and I am its permanent host,

Alexei Navalny, and apparently the kind of person

who could have pocketed union money,

as various Kremlin-controlled media called me this week,

yes, someone who could have pocketed union money — but

I didn't pocket the unions' money.

I didn't pocket the unions' money because

the unions collect money into their own

separate account, and they are very transparent.

They report on everything, and I am very proud

to help Russia's independent trade unions,

and I urge you to support them too. Send in your questions

with the hashtag #RussiaOfTheFuture on Twitter. I won't

be answering questions from

the mugs today — specifically, from the people who

these wonderful people are the ones who are

sponsors and friends of our channel, and there

is an option there where you can

get your name written on a mug. There are a lot

of such people, and I don't even know whether I'll have

enough time in the program — or enough mugs —

to write down all the names. Of course, I won't do it every

single time, but right now

it's an important moment: on

the previous program, we set a record for

those little ducks — the money ducks

that float across the bottom of the screen carrying money.

We were raising money for fines, and today I'm also

continuing to raise money for those very fines

that staff members, municipal deputies, campaign workers,

I, and many others — almost all independent

candidates — now supposedly owe to Mosgortrans (Moscow public transport),

the police, the National Guard, and the Armenia restaurant,

a huge amount of money. And that money

has to be paid — these are the kinds of sums

they will have to pay because all of us together

demanded our right to

independent politics, demanded our

right to

participate in peaceful protests. It's a kind of tax

that Putin has imposed on everyone

who takes part in organizing

mass demonstrations. So it would probably be fair

if all of us chipped in a little

and together raised the amount.

23,000 people are watching us live right now.

There are a huge number of questions. The week,

of course, was packed with

events. Let's try to discuss

more or less all of it — lots of different

topics. Send your questions, I'll be asking, I'll be

answering your questions. I want to start

with the issue of bars and the issue of

St. Petersburg. It seems to me very

important — St. Petersburg is actually a very telling city.

If you've been to St. Petersburg

recently, especially if you went there on vacation,

then, after all, probably

for most people — for most people,

and for me in particular, of course —

St. Petersburg's wonderful museums

and various beautiful

landmarks matter, but so do all the bars and

places where people eat and spend their evenings

enjoying themselves in a civilized way — they are also

absolutely wonderful, really.

It's wonderful when you're in St. Petersburg

in the evening, in these

popular nightlife spots, and you look around

and see how well everything is organized, even under

this government, which simply

crushes everyone and doesn't let anyone develop.

You realize that, basically, if you give

normal Russian people

freedom, they'll do everything very well.

In that sense, St. Petersburg looks very good,

very cool, and really impressive compared

with any European capital. Eating and drinking there

there

is just one continuous pleasure. And now the United Russia party

wants

to make there be a lot less

of that pleasure. This week they

passed a law under which all bars

with an area of less than 50 square meters will be shut down.

All of this is being done under the pretext that

residents are against it. Very often these

small bars open simply

in residential buildings, and naturally,

cities always involve conflict — especially

a big city, which is always a big

conflict. And there are St. Petersburg residents who

live there and say, 'I just love that

some Navalny cultist has dragged himself over from Moscow

to our Rubinstein Street.' As everyone knows,

what do those Moscow suckers do?

They go to Rubinstein Street,

start drinking there and wandering back and forth.

Naturally, some people don't like that,

because it disturbs their peace and sleep.

That's a natural conflict in any big

city. But United Russia's solution is always

to ban things — and in fact it has banned all

these bars by passing this special law.

6,000 people will lose their jobs,

and around 200 establishments will close.

And that's why I chose this as the first topic

and why I'm talking about it for so long: it's simply

a typical example of how United Russia, and

the authorities in general, won't let anyone live,

won't let anyone live in peace, and will destroy everything

good that exists. And really,

the coronavirus crisis has only just ended,

and all these places and businesses are barely hanging on.

There's a big food court here,

right across from our office, and we

go there for lunch every day. I come in and see that

30 percent of the places have closed.

Thirty percent. And it's like that everywhere. Some people

worked there, someone made some profit,

but someone lived off that. That's exactly the kind of

business that makes everything around it

better and makes people a little wealthier. And nobody

became a millionaire from it, no.

Everything is fine when it comes to billionaires and the billionaire class.

Fine, but these small little places here—

these cool establishments apparently need to be banned urgently.

A deputy spoke well on this issue:

Maxim Reznik in the Legislative Assembly

of St. Petersburg. Let’s listen.

1:28 — Reznik on this.

Even before this law was passed, I simply

want to address United Russia and say:

Guys, you’re doing something wrong, and you

don’t need to hit yet another new low. This is

ultimately a matter of self-respect.

Where are all the people who still respect themselves?

And colleagues, I would like to propose that you remove

item eight from the agenda—the issue

of regulating the circulation of alcoholic and

alcohol-containing products, or more simply,

the “50-meter law.” Dear colleagues,

members of the Legislative Assembly, a number of

deputies, including the Assembly’s leadership, have received

an appeal

from more than a hundred entrepreneurs

who will be affected by this law. Colleagues, I am not

asking you right now to reject it outright,

just give me one minute for the reasoning

as to why I still believe it should be

removed. The entrepreneurs, broadly speaking,

are citing rather alarming figures. They say that

passing this law will lead to a drop of

700 million rubles in direct revenue alone

for the city, and, by their estimate, 1.4

billion rubles in total losses. Six thousand

jobs could be lost in the city.

Colleagues, let’s think about this. We have only just

started emerging from the epidemic (pandemic), and we have not

done much to help businesses. And now, of course,

I understand residents’ concerns—

that is sacred, and we must respond to issues

connected with violations of their rights

to a comfortable living environment. But if

there is a clash of interests, what will it give us

to pass this in the third reading? Think about it.

We will only make the situation even more conflict-ridden.

We’ll pass it in the third reading, the governor will sign it,

but that won’t solve the problem.

Then I or someone else will introduce a reverse law,

and again there will be this kind of forced

dialogue—in a confrontational mode, in a

conflict-ridden environment. Maybe now

it makes sense to stop.

Still, United Russia went ahead and did it.

Despite Reznik’s speech and

the objections of other deputies, there is

a petition on Change.org, various

open letters—yes, all of that is absolutely right.

But I call on these representatives

of business, especially small business

in St. Petersburg, the representatives of all these

cafes that are going to be destroyed, and those

six thousand people who will lose

their jobs: guys, simply asking is not enough here.

What’s needed here is a real ultimatum.

This is a large segment of business, and while

understanding that some

city residents have a somewhat different view

of all this, they may need some kind of compensation.

Not that you necessarily have to pour

free drinks for all the people

living on the floors above these cafes,

but still, some kind of arrangement with them

has to be worked out. This is not a matter of simply

shutting everything down.

It is generally clear why United Russia

did this: it was financed,

lobbied for, and paid for by the owners

of large establishments. They want these

cool little bars packed with people

to be shut down so everyone moves over to them, and some

United Russia member made out well from it.

So here’s the point.

There’s no need to just ask, beg, and

send in all kinds of appeals. You need to say:

Fine, you may shut us down, but we will not disappear.

We will declare war.

United Russia did this, after all.

We will wage a fight against the governor—

a war.

Against the city administration, whose head is not

especially loved in St. Petersburg as it is.

And we will go after them; we will declare war on Putin.

We will drive down their ratings. Six thousand people

stripped of their jobs—

that is a major force. Hundreds of establishments,

each with owners behind them—that is

a fairly substantial organizational resource.

And they need to fight back; this government needs to be pressured,

just as we actually tried to do

during the “Five Steps” campaign.

On Vladimir Milov’s broadcast there was

Konstantin Sonin,

one of Russia’s best-known

economists. He said that if it had not been for

the “Five Steps” program, if we had not

put forward it at the time as an

ultimatum to United Russia—if you don’t pay,

not a kopeck, we’ll crush you in Moscow at

the elections—then Putin, of course, would never

have paid those 10,000 rubles, and then another

10,000 rubles per child, nor

fulfilled that part of the program. Because

this government understands no other language.

When you ask it for something and try

to negotiate, it doesn’t work, because

someone has already brought over a bag of money.

The owners of the big establishments have, and your

requests interest no one. What they fear

is not even just the language of ultimatums, but

a real threat—

when it starts to interfere with their political

interests. In St. Petersburg this

week, the governor distinguished himself because

he was probably at some point under the illusion

that he had

high approval ratings, and that Putin had high

approval ratings too, apparently forgetting for a second

that all of that was fabricated.

So he went off to a football match to congratulate

the Zenit football club at the Zenit stadium.

at the Zenit Arena, and he was booed there

let's watch about three minutes of this

for context, at first it's 1 minute 17 seconds in

Alexander Dyukov is speaking

the head of the Russian Football Union, and

then Beglov speaks, and you'll hear

what a striking difference there is. So,

Beglov was booed at the stadium

[applause]

I know

and in the upper stands too

as you can see. Beglov clearly wanted

to insert himself right into a very

St. Petersburg story, but Zenit is above all

a source of pride specifically for the people of St. Petersburg, and so

he showed up in a scarf and all that, and got

complete rejection. And this is actually not

nonsense — it's an extremely important political

thing. Do you remember what marked the beginning of the end

for the previous governor, Governor

Poltavchenko? Let me remind you of these

remarkable 21 seconds, after which

it became absolutely, definitively clear

that Poltavchenko was finished as the head

of the city of St. Petersburg. Let's watch this one

moment

[applause]

for what?

[applause]

this

[applause]

that's it — there was no more Poltavchenko after that

he had been showing off somewhere, like every

United Russia politician, and said on some occasion that

the residents of St. Petersburg, supposedly,

often behave like petty nobodies (a reference to his insulting remark), and then

he came to the stadium again, and

the stadium chanted against the governor — and that was it, no more

Poltavchenko. And the same thing

will happen to Beglov, because the authorities

have traditionally claimed that

fans and organized supporter groups are

a kind of stronghold for the regime, these

radical fan groups

at one time they were even used for

attacks on the opposition; in general, the authorities do quite a bit

with them and think this is a

in their view, patriotically

minded segment that will

go all out for the authorities. But that hasn't been true for a long time

and when it breaks through like this, when at the

stadium they boo the governor, that

means his approval rating is way below

rock bottom. And I started with the case of the

restaurateurs in St. Petersburg who

are simply being destroyed right now because

the area of their establishments is less than 50

square meters. That's where the pressure should be applied, that's where

you need to hit. There's no need to beg Beglov

you need to say: Beglov, you may shut us down,

but our swan song will be

that we will

bury you politically, and we will destroy your ratings. And as the famous historian said,

do you think I won't outplay you?

do you think I won't

destroy you? That's what needs to be said. Well,

shut us down — and we'll destroy you. And that's exactly

what needs to be done. So, wrapping up

this topic, I just want once again to

support all those establishments that

they are now trying in St. Petersburg

to shut down. They are the pride of St. Petersburg, and

truly, absolutely

a European-style project that emerged

on its own, without support from the authorities. What

the authorities are doing now is destroying

this European project. A lot of people here are asking

Art Maniac asks,

by what system the Investigative Committee and the Interior Ministry choose whom

to squeeze, whose place needs to be searched

Anatoly Mavrinkov asks: what is happening

at all? Every day it's either a search, an interrogation, or

an arrest — wake up in the morning and get ready for prison

Anatoly writes to us

dear Art Maniac, dear Anatoly, they

choose all this for only one

reason: to do something like this so that

Art Maniac and Anatoly Mavrinkov

will be intimidated. Because, well, the purpose of all these

arrests — we'll discuss them later

today; they are very different: Furgal, and

Open Russia, Verzilov, and so on — but

the goal is one: to make you afraid. Because

there are a lot of you, and the Investigative Committee

is small — the number of Investigative Committee

personnel is far smaller than the audience of this

program. And the number of all these

security-service people involved in

the repression is much smaller than the number of viewers

of this program. So the only

way for this regime to survive

is simply to grab one person

make an example of them, publicly

torment and persecute them so that

you all become terrified. There is no other way

for them to do it. That's why they

engage in this kind of crap. And by the way,

speaking of local courts and so on,

there is some good news too — very rare news, all the more so because

once again the news came from

that same St. Petersburg, to which we've already devoted 17

minutes of our program, but

St. Petersburg undoubtedly

deserves it. The video I

showed you — I probably showed it three times over the summer

because it's such a

cool video, one that perfectly illustrates

how the elections were conducted in

St. Petersburg, where everything was

totally falsified in the

municipal elections. There, for 30

seconds, you can see commission members simply

running away with the documents because they couldn't

forge them right in front of

the observers, so they grabbed all

the documents and ran. Let's watch — it's just

simply

it really is absolutely astonishing

Video: polling station election commission number

1280 — they needed to falsify the votes

the results in favor of their own candidates. The thing is,

here people simply just took the ballot papers

not the official tally sheet, and went off somewhere with the help of

the commission. So, we can see that the observer

is simply shocked and can’t even understand what

can be done in this situation. But the

good news is that

yesterday the Moskovsky District Court

of St. Petersburg partially annulled

the voting results at this polling station

because it was simply impossible not to

annul them: a commission member

was sitting there and then left with the ballots. And so

three Smart Voting candidates

became deputies in this district. That is very

great. In fact, court cases are still ongoing there

— it’s not always possible everywhere to

win like this and ensure that those who

won actually become deputies, but nevertheless it

shows how important it is

to do this work consistently

how important it is to become an observer

and how important it is, when there is a real election, yes

that’s what made it different from the notorious

nationwide vote. In St. Petersburg there was

lawlessness — complete lawlessness — during that

nationwide vote across the whole

country, but there were observers there, there

was at least some procedure, it was possible there

to go to court. So this is very important. And once

again during this program I’ll repeat

for the millionth time: go to the Smart Voting website

and register. There are 61

election campaigns that it will cover, and

that is the scope that

Smart Voting will cover. There will also be many, many

campaigns at a smaller level where we

won’t be able to cover everything. Well, there are 31

regions, guys — this is where your efforts are needed

so please take part

54 thousand people, people

54 thousand people are watching us live

on air

About ice cream

Someone is asking me — I’ll say something about it, Witch

well, when you write such, such

obscene usernames, I can’t even

say them out loud — maybe you can see this username

I can’t pronounce it, although it’s fairly

funny and cleverly rhymed. Should we expect

new cases, Abbas, for so-called

justification of terrorism? What do you think about the case of

Svetlana Prokopyeva, and she

received a guilty verdict and

fortunately a fine rather than

a prison sentence. What did I think? I spoke about what

I think when the Prokopyeva case

began

She wrote a column after

a young man blew himself up in

the reception area of the FSB (Federal Security Service) and left a note saying that the FSB

uses torture, that the FSB torments people

and therefore, basically, “I’ll go and blow this up”

She wrote that the FSB itself was to blame for the fact that

he went and blew himself up, and to prosecute her

criminally for justifying

terrorism

But Svetlana Prokopyeva was absolutely right in

every word

The method used by that

terrorist — well, of course the method

was terrorist: he went to that reception office and

blew it up. Some warrant officer was standing

at the gate for no particular reason — he personally

hadn’t tortured anyone, he was just, just

an ordinary guy who had simply found a job

at the FSB, and yes, he died

for nothing

But the logical conclusions that

pushed this person toward a completely

wrong method of struggle — they existed, they

arose in his head precisely

because the FSB tortured people, tormented people

absolutely innocent people. And when people

look at our Federal Security Service

which receives enormous

amounts of money in order to protect

our security, our country, from threats

and instead itself simply grabs

random people and shocks them with electricity to force out of them

confessions of participation in

nonexistent extremist groups

well, obviously this leads to people’s

alienation and hatred. So Prokopyeva

wrote everything absolutely correctly, and

I say this with absolutely no fear that

a case like that will be brought against me or you

a criminal case — go ahead and open one. Anyone can see that

all of this happened

precisely because inside the FSB there are

scoundrels who say, “Let’s torture

people, let’s torture them,” and then when

photos emerge in court showing these

electrical burn marks from electric shocks

they say, “Well, he was bitten by

insects.” And that is not an exaggeration either — it is

the pure truth. They look everyone straight in the eye

— the judge, the public — smile and

say, “Well, you know, he was bitten by

insects, we didn’t beat him

with electric current.” So they

are [__] scoundrels and in fact are

enemies of our country, despite the fact that

they have

FSB ID cards. In that

sense, of course, the truth was entirely on

Svetlana Prokopyeva’s side, and that is exactly

why they formally convicted her but did not

dare to punish her with any kind of

real prison term, because that would have been

utter, absolute lawlessness

So, Alexander asks me: if

multi-day voting is extended

to elections, how can it be monitored? Well, we’ll

monitor it the same way, Alexander. You should

go right now to the Smart Voting website

I’m in the voting section there right now.

As of today, an article has appeared there.

Sign up as an observer, and then you’ll—

it will be hard for you, hard for us, and hard for everyone

else too. People will have it hard—three times harder.

Before, all it took was money.

Now there will be three days of voting there,

and there’s no telling what they’ll do, plus it’s unclear

what will happen overnight. Everything will be very

difficult. But if you sign up there, we

will be able to monitor at least something, in any

case, because there will be some kind of

formal procedure, some kind of control

over the number of ballots—well, that is,

we’ll have to improvise.

You have to understand that under the chosen

procedure, elections in our country will go

completely off the rails, because Putin and United Russia

simply have no other way to win.

They understand that very well.

That’s why they will keep making elections

worse and worse. But as you can see from

the examples of Moscow and St. Petersburg,

we can still beat them, because the most

important thing is this:

people aren’t voting for us—they are voting

for themselves, and therefore against United Russia, which

suits us perfectly. So we will

monitor things—well, we will

monitor, we will work on it, and

most importantly, we need to take to the streets

if we are monitoring and see that they

have rigged things.

Without that, nothing will ever work. 56

thousand people are watching us

live. A question from STREST:

“Olja, what is the point of this? Am I understanding something incorrectly?”

This is about the amendments—there is a provision here

on borders. According to the amendment to the law on

countering extremism, officials

will be able to transfer state

territory of Russia to other states. But

the real issue is this: they were running around

with these constitutional amendments

shouting that now, under the new Constitution,

no one would be able to give away part of Russian

territory, because that is

forbidden. But there is a little caveat there, because

it is forbidden

except under interstate

agreements. Because in reality,

the main person

who has been giving away Russian lands

in recent years is Putin, who

handed over territory to China.

He gave islands to China. But when this

is done, you can give away Russian

territories, but within the framework of inter-

state agreements. But if you

simply say, “Let’s give the islands

on the Amur River to China,” criminal charges

could be brought against you.

And then Putin comes along and says, “Let’s

give the islands on the Amur to China,” and he gives

those islands away, and nothing happens to Putin

because, well, that’s the kind of Constitution it is.

As for coronavirus news, the situation is developing

in such a way that by now it is

almost—well, no, it is still

being discussed in the media, but it seems like

less and less. Everyone is tired of the topic, which I

have said repeatedly on broadcasts. And

in general, this week I flew twice

by plane, and you can clearly see

people’s fatigue and irritation with the very

topic itself, with all these

mask rules. You walk into the airport,

and there is this typically

Russian absurdity in security procedures:

you can’t get past the first checkpoint

without a mask, so you put one on.

Then as soon as you get through,

everyone immediately takes them off in irritation

and walks around without masks. Nevertheless,

the authorities as a whole strongly support

the idea that there is no more coronavirus,

but the objective data that

is now, of course, coming in from

across the country shows that right now

things are very bad and everything is trending upward. Our

authorities, of course, have found

the one possible, utterly “brilliant”

way to improve the situation—

or rather, the coronavirus statistics. This

week they fired a well-known

demographer named Alexei Raksha. This

caused a minor scandal, and it is

very important, because he was not

just some person, you know, sitting on the

internet counting things and

convincingly using numbers to prove that

all the coronavirus statistics

are fake, like Leonid Volkov, for example.

He does that too, relying on official

data to show that all of it is lies. But this

was Alexei Raksha—he worked as an adviser

to Rosstat (Russia’s federal statistics agency), so he was an official

person who, relying on the real

data available in Rosstat,

consistently proved that this whole

situation, all the Russian coronavirus

statistics, was absolutely fabricated,

that it was all a complete lie.

But several of his interviews caused

serious dissatisfaction among the official

authorities, and it all ended with

him simply being dismissed. He wrote about it

on Facebook.

And he wrote officially: “My work at

Rosstat has come to an end.”

“The idea was neither mine nor Rosstat’s.”

That wording makes it clear that

this was not, even for a moment,

Rosstat’s initiative—

rather, of course,

it was obviously an initiative from the Kremlin, which

needs to prove, especially now,

that the coronavirus is practically gone and no longer a problem.

the nationwide vote, some parades

doesn’t affect anything at all, and

at the same time

a person comes in—a person from Rosstat (Russia’s federal statistics agency), that is

and says, you know, right now in

Russia, it’s not 11,000 deaths

as in the official figures, but between 30,000 and 40,000

thousand. Read it—I highly recommend it. There was an

interview with him, with Alexei Raksha

—Raksha, I suppose the surname declines—in Radio Svoboda (Radio Liberty)

I really recommend reading it

it’s a very informative interview, especially

from the point of view of statistics in the Caucasus

he talks quite interestingly there about

the fact that, first of all, the statistics are completely

falsified; the spread is such that we don’t understand

whether 30,000 people died or 40

thousand people died, because in the

Caucasus there are basically no statistics at all, but

as for the official statistics, again

please show that quote

from the official Stop Coronavirus website, here

he says outright that all this

statistics on the state-run website

Stop Coronavirus are made up

fake, adjusted, tidied up

trimmed down

well, and manually engineered, controlled—in other words, once

again, this is a person who worked at Rosstat

and dealt with all this data, and relying on

the real Rosstat data, he says

that the authorities are lying, and that is of course

the most important thing that every

person should understand right now: that

600 people a day are dying now

hospitals in the regions are completely full

they simply aren’t making the diagnosis

testing for coronavirus has practically

stopped, because the more

you test, the more cases you find

and there mustn’t be any cases

because, as we know, Putin has

defeated the coronavirus, and the nationwide

vote was held in a situation

where there was supposedly almost no coronavirus, so despite

our general exhaustion from everything that

is happening, still, take care of yourselves

take care of your elderly relatives

An interesting

thing happened here with the

statistics—this is also about the coronavirus

remember there was a rather scandalous

episode, and I talked about it here, when

the governor of Lipetsk Region, whose surname is

Artamonov—I talk about him often, a very

stupid governor who really likes talking

all kinds of nonsense—and in particular he

got caught when he was talking on the phone and

was directly giving instructions about

how the coronavirus statistics needed to be falsified

it was quite a high-profile

case. Did you play that recording? Let’s

listen again—28 seconds. Governor Arta...

and he later confirmed that it was him

on that recording saying that the statistics needed to be

falsified. So far I can

see what he’ll answer as soon as they respond to me

they reply to me, well, for now they’re giving the data...

you understand how to change it, why

won’t you catch on

[music]

the governor simply says outright: the numbers

need to be changed. Then later this

governor says, yes, actually that was my

voice, and he confirmed it

people in Lipetsk, naturally, were outraged

they filed a complaint with the prosecutor’s office, and then

a reply came from the prosecutor’s office. The prosecutor’s office

reports

you know, we will not conduct

any investigation, we will do nothing

because

it is impossible to identify the persons participating in the

dialogue. Yes, the governor said

it was him—well, first of all, it’s obvious that

it was him, and second, he confirmed that it was

but for the prosecutor’s office it is apparently impossible

to identify that, so there will be no

investigation. Again, right before everyone’s eyes

before an astonished public

there occurs this situation where

the prosecutor’s office, the body responsible for overseeing

legality, ignores that legality

to an even greater extent than that crook

that governor. At least he had enough

courage to say, yes, I said it on the

phone, while the prosecutor’s office says, no, it

wasn’t him. And that’s simply to say that

what is happening now—Dr. Roshal has simply

performed in a truly remarkable way. He

still remains for us Leonid Roshal, our

doctor, lodged there in the boarding house of saints

—that is, a person who simply

consistently speaks in support of this government

always one of Putin’s trusted representatives

constantly backing any lie

of Putin’s. In fairness, it should be said

that he does sometimes speak up for doctors

but mainly, of course, he goes all in

for this government and always sticks to

the government line

but this children’s doctor Roshal, supposedly, he

is still treated as sacred—you’re not supposed to criticize him

but in that sense, as you know,

I don’t recognize such authorities or idols

Roshal included, and I too will say

everything plainly. And this week he of course came out

as simply a model

hypocrite without a shred of conscience—he wrote a tweet

and, in heartrending fashion, decided to address everyone

like a kind doctor. So, the tweet says

July 5: My dear friends,

don’t be fools, keep wearing them on the street

on public transport and in public places—wear

masks

nothing is over yet. On the streets of Moscow

there are crowds of people who don’t understand that if

the number of infections rises, and so on and so forth

For the deaths, you’ll blame the mayor,

the government, and the president — but not yourselves.

How interesting: dear Dr. Roshal is once again

saying that Muscovites are to blame because they don’t

follow any rules, and then he’ll go on blaming

the president and the mayor — but not himself, of course.

The doctor, practically jumping out of his white coat and

his pants, wants to defend the mayor and

the president, because Muscovites aren’t wearing

masks.

And then, supposedly, they’ll wake up — but it will already

be too late. What was Dr. Roshal telling us on March 3?

Roshal, in a 28-second clip, called for punishing people

for spreading panic: “There’s nothing like that, nothing at all.”

“Live calmly and work calmly.”

What is happening now, according to these gentlemen,

about this

or about the coronavirus, is in fact not

much scarier than the flu, from which

people die

in even greater numbers.

That is, on March 3, when it was necessary

to introduce quarantine in Europe — and it was already

everywhere there — it was still possible to take

some measures, and the numbers of infected and dead

were much lower. Dr. Roshal

was calling, you understand, for “panic-mongers” to be punished.

Here is his tweet: “Nothing has ended; on

the streets of Moscow there are crowds,” and so on. “People need

to wear masks” — which, according to him, was basically

panic-mongering. That was March 3.

Dr. Roshal’s March 3 version was that

such people should be punished. On March 23, he

was telling us that all this was not at all

more dangerous than other illnesses. In a 30-second clip:

“There’s no need to fear it or whip up

such

a nervous atmosphere among the people, because if

you look at it, the contagiousness

of this virus is in many ways lower than

the contagiousness of others, and mortality from

this virus is much lower than from many

other viral infections.”

But now Dr. Roshal

is twisting himself in midair, bending over backwards

as much as possible in order to

protect

the mayor and the president, and once again blame

Muscovites. I mean, maybe he is, of course,

a good doctor,

but as a person he is genuinely without a conscience,

really — just

a shameless person.

A shameless person can probably

treat children too, and he specifically does — but still,

this is Dr. Roshal, and of course

the absence of his conscience is probably best

confirmed by the fact that he is

constantly a trusted representative for Putin

and Sobyanin, and all the rest. One might at least feel

a little ashamed. After all, on television he was

recently saying that all this was nonsense, that there was no

need to panic — and now it’s “Muscovites,”

“why are you going out without a mask, be

responsible.”

Blame the president instead? So all these

figures the television keeps selling us as

saints — “don’t you dare criticize them,”

“he saved so many children,”

“how can you criticize Dr. Roshal?” No, I

am not criticizing the children he saved, and the children have nothing

to do with this. But when this person is absolutely

hypocritical, lies, and shields the authorities

who are killing people, including through their own

irresponsible behavior, then of course we need

to say everything we think needs to be said.

So Dr. Roshal himself should go

and treat children, if he is still capable of

treating children, instead of going on talk shows and

wagging his tongue, because what he

is doing is simply disgusting, just

disgusting. I’m really

worked up about Dr. Roshal, because

it’s just impossible,

simply impossible to watch. Especially when he

puts on that white coat and says

he is speaking on behalf of the medical community.

He is simply, simply lying and being hypocritical. So,

questions.

A sensible person asks: have I heard about Roman Putin and

his current push

into politics? Of course I have.

I commented on it in the previous

program. I think this is, or rather

most likely, Roman Putin’s own initiative — Putin’s nephew.

As for everyone else, how are they supposed to

stop him? I mean, in principle, if

Roman Putin is Roman Putin — he is

a relative — and tomorrow he starts doing

more or less whatever he wants, then how are they supposed to

stop him? Who can? People from the State Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament) or

from any other body can call

Putin and say, “Excuse me, Vladimir Vladimirovich,

your Roma is acting up — did you

approve this or not?” In the current system

of power, there is no way to find that out.

So just in case, Roman Putin will

more or less be allowed the same thing — that is,

he’ll be allowed almost anything. Almette Amir

asks me whether I knew about Putin’s nephew.

It’s the same story. Kalashnikov EMS:

“Please comment on the documentary about

... please — I haven’t seen it. I know

that it’s a high-profile film about the rights

of homosexuals in Chechnya, but I haven’t seen it, so

I’m not prepared to comment on it.

There are a lot of questions about the rainbow,

about the rainbow, and this is not entertainment.

Of course, as a news story it was entertaining in its own way;

everyone listened, everyone laughed, and Twitter was full

of jokes on the subject. But this is an extremely important

news story, because it shows that the authorities

are degrading not along some smooth,

gradual downward line, slowly hitting bottom,

but rather

in these sudden lurches downward, and

of course this whole rainbow issue

shows exactly that kind of plunge downward.

because it’s a little closer to the bottom

Why? Because this whole adoption of

the Constitution, and one of its main

features, one of the main driving forces

behind Putin’s whole falsification here

was precisely the theme of some kind of strong family

What’s especially funny about this is that the entire

leadership of the Russian authorities

well, there are loads of divorced people there; in our country

every second marriage falls apart, and that’s not

a tragedy—well, it didn’t work out, it just didn’t

for some people family life works out, and for

others it doesn’t

that happens. But there, people have started second

families, some have a bunch of children born out of wedlock, and

let’s be frank, everything we see in the

private lives of Russian officials

differs very, very sharply from the

idea of a traditional strong family. But

all the same, it is this “strong family” that is supposedly

going to teach us how to become solid

family people, and all of this is very skillfully

mixed in with the claim that they are

fighting “perversions,” homosexuality

— homosexuals, gays

and everyone else as well

what they call Western

perversions. And it’s clear why this

is being done: if we conduct any poll, we’ll

see that in our society there is

a negative attitude toward any manifestations

of homosexuality, and they are simply trying

to extract the maximum

political dividends from it. But it no longer

works only in that way, where

there are, as is well known, a certain number

indeed a huge number of high-status

homosexuals within the Russian authorities

who use

anti-gay hysteria in order

to strengthen their own hold on power. There are also

a lot of people lower down who are simply nuts

and in the example of

Yekaterina Lakhova and representatives of the

Women of Russia Union, we see representatives

of a genuinely deranged establishment who

also want to get some

political dividends out of this, and Putin

goes along with it because he can no longer

backtrack—after all, he already said he was the main

fighter against homosexuality, against this

“perversion” that supposedly prevents

our traditional families from flourishing, and so he

is forced to humor people who are genuinely crazy, and

Ms. Lakhova, of course, is simply

a madwoman—read her biography

you’ll be amazed. This madwoman also came out

against Rainbow ice cream

Let’s listen to a 47-second

episode that ought to remain in the

history of Russian politics, because

a crazy woman, calling things by their proper names,

spouts nonsense, and after this nonsense Putin

says the issue needs to be taken under

control. Let’s listen: “After all, they gave a platform

to Roskomnadzor (Russia’s media and communications regulator) and said that propaganda

— that there must be no propaganda here. But

today, for example, on billboards

they put up

these rainbow, beautiful colors—it seems

subtle, with nice words—or

they advertise ice cream that is also

called Rainbow, and so on: consume

this ice cream, and so forth. In this, it is

indirect, but it still makes

our children get used to that color, to that

symbol which is, generally speaking, displayed

including at the U.S. embassy

Therefore, I would very much like

the values that we tried

to enshrine in our Constitution to be

kept under control. We had a couple of

actual instructions issued on the ground…”

And after that, Putin took all of this under

control and said the issue required

monitoring. So this wasn’t just

empty talk—actually, following the

meeting, at the suggestion of Comrade

Lakhova, a proposal was made to check—I don’t

know whether by Roskomnadzor or someone else—whether

a rainbow on ice cream might be something

that violates the principles

enshrined in the Constitution, and whether this

ice cream turns children into

homosexuals. And of course everyone laughs at this

and you’re smirking right now, and some people

are tapping their temple, but this is real, and

the instruction was actually issued, because deputy

Lakhova is called crazy—and the crazy ones

have been sitting in this vertical of power for a very long time

Go to her Wikipedia page right now

and you’ll plainly see 30 years

of idleness. She’s been serving as a deputy since 1990

— a People’s Deputy of the USSR

then, accordingly, she was

a Communist, then she ran over to

Luzhkov’s Fatherland party, then United Russia, and

so on and so forth. In other words, she’s spent 30 years

sitting in power doing nothing—an idler

an idler, but one who understands how everything works

You have to say: ‘Vladimir Vladimirovich,

issue an instruction, because this violates the

values we have just enshrined

in the Constitution.’ All of this is framed in such

a way that you can’t really say, well, people like

Lakhova—are you kidding? I mean,

you can’t just say she’s completely insane

because you yourself just

dragged all that into the Constitution, so

the instruction was given. I can imagine how everyone

must have been stunned in the Jewish Autonomous

Oblast (a federal region in Russia’s Far East)

because let’s take a look at the coat of arms

of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast—what do we

see? A rainbow—the very same terrible rainbow

that supposedly turns everyone into homosexuals

gay people, or whatever else. And do you know

what the old badge of the center used to look like?

the election commission—let's recall it like this.

This is what the election commission's emblem and central office logo look like, well—

pull that up. They changed it later, apparently,

so that people wouldn't, you know, get the wrong idea from it.

So that wouldn't happen. But the regional

election commissions have logos too, and

take Voronezh, for example, and in

particular, the election commission there has a rainbow.

It's not on this picture anymore, but here

it is, please: the Electoral

Commission of the Voronezh Region—right

now they still have this ominous rainbow.

It's really something. And what if children see it

while walking past a polling station in

the Voronezh Region?

Children might see a sign like that—what will happen to them?

And what if they see the sign first

at the election commission

and then eat some ice cream? We'll really have to

bomb Voronezh after that,

because of course this is just such a

complete Sodom. Once upon a time,

the Lord destroyed Sodom, and Putin, apparently, will have to

bomb Voronezh, because he

may—well, maybe not, but we're being told this in all seriousness, one hundred percent,

in complete seriousness.

A war on the rainbow is being declared, and there's this

lady sitting there.

Just google, out of curiosity, a children's drawing contest.

I was preparing for today's

program, and I thought: children's drawing contest, I love that.

What do we see? Kindness, goodness—we see

because what does a child draw?

They draw the sun, they draw their mom,

they draw little things, and they draw a rainbow,

because all children draw rainbows. Who

could ever have imagined that

something this absurd would actually be said out loud, and that there would be

an order to put it under strict, ironclad control—

to monitor depictions of rainbows,

because they're supposedly against the Constitution. But it

actually happened. That's why I say this isn't

a gradual degradation—it's happening in leaps.

They'll probably, of course, try to hush up

this whole Lakhova situation (Yekaterina Lakhova, a Russian senator), because

they understand that it just looks

ridiculous, and everyone is laughing at them.

But even so, separately, there's another

very funny part: the ice cream called Rainbow

was advertised by—who advertised it?

Putin's official campaign surrogates.

Let's take a look at who's advertising

this dangerous ice cream. It's 40 seconds long, but: what

is Rainbow? A brightly delicious plombir-style ice cream from

Chistaya Liniya.

What is Rainbow? Rainbow is ice cream,

wickedly tasty ice cream, brightly delicious

plombir-style ice cream from Chistaya Liniya. Rainbow is

ice cream that makes you want to sing about it.

Brightly delicious plombir-style ice cream from Chistaya Liniya.

Tell me, what is Rainbow? Rainbow is

bright ice cream.

[music]

Brightly delicious plombir-style ice cream from Chistaya Liniya.

The Zapashny brothers

—well-known animal trainers, thoroughly pro-Putin,

the kind you couldn't stamp with enough marks—such

typical sellout representatives

of show business, constantly serving as

Putin's trusted surrogates, constantly fawning over him

far more than they were fawning over

this dangerous ice cream in their ads. But

now they're already forced to write some kind of

responses there, to make excuses, because

well, because you have to justify yourself,

you have to somehow

explain why this supposedly dangerous

ice cream

was being advertised. And it's funny, funny—well, not

really funny, because it's from little blocks like these

that state

ideology gets built. They said it at some official meeting,

there are instructions now, and I assure you,

next time any

I don't know—organization, ice cream company, whatever—

whatever it may be, they won't

put a rainbow on their logo purely for

these reasons. That's exactly how it

works: on the one hand, everyone laughed,

but on the other hand, some

kindergarten called Rainbow, or someone wanting to name

a club 'Rainbow'—

someone will say, 'Listen, damn, maybe

let's not call it Rainbow, to hell with it.'

'You get mixed up with rainbows even a little bit,

and there'll be trouble.' That's how it becomes normal. Because

this is actually being discussed at the

state level.

That's exactly how it works: step by

step, and the rainbow

will be pushed somewhere—toward the realm

of marginal symbols. And then

a rainbow appears in the sky,

and when a rainbow appears in the sky, instead of

saying to the person next to you,

especially to a child, 'Look, a rainbow,

how beautiful,' now it'll be more like, 'Oh, look, a rainbow—

heh-heh.'

Lakhova and Putin don't like it. But that's

exactly how it works, and how it will keep working

always, because the state machine

doesn't go into reverse. It just

has now reached the point of 'rainbow bad,' and

it will never go back. And about Lakhova—

there was another very funny story.

Do you remember Bondarenko from Saratov (Nikolai Bondarenko, an opposition politician), whom

I often mention here? He

once, about a month later, proposed that

deputies try living

on 3,500 rubles a month (about 35–40 USD at the time),

on the subsistence minimum, and that really got under United Russia's skin.

And Lakhova then

outraged everyone—she was a senator from

the Bryansk Region.

She basically said that people shouldn't

show off too much, because let's

remember how people lived during the war, and

in general, sometimes...

If someone tells you that you're poor, you want

to get indignant. "Let's remember the horrors

of war, and you can eat buckwheat every day

— that's fine, nothing will happen to you

— let's eat buckwheat every day."

That's absurd too, and it was infuriating —

a completely absurd statement, an attempt

to prove to poor people that they're not actually

poor, and that they should compare their

salary — well, "salary," I don't know — to salaries in Estonia

or Poland or Moscow? For residents

of Bryansk Region, they're supposed to compare, I

don't know, with 1943, with what people

ate during the war? It's complete nonsense, but

still, the head of the Union of Women of Russia

keeps attending Putin's meetings,

and across this whole area — across the whole

family-and-children policy track —

conservative policy is being handled by

this exact crazy woman who wants

to ban... This is very important: 69

thousand people are watching us live

and asking us what's happening with our

conscripts. I'll tell you about the military enlistment office.

I'll explain. Right — a clown asks me:

"Please comment on the increase

in housing and utility fees in Moscow and the Moscow

Region."

The tsar is taking back the money supposedly given to doctors and

children. And this isn't happening only in

Moscow and the Moscow Region.

Right after this vote, they immediately raised

utility rates by 4%.

Well yes, he is taking it back — the tsar, absolutely,

is taking this money back, and we can see that

every time after elections, after some

important event like that, when they

forced everyone to make a gesture of approval

toward the authorities, what do they do? Raise taxes.

Putin won the presidential election

and immediately raised the retirement age. And now

they've breathed out, held the vote,

passed the Constitution amendments, and are starting to raise

utility rates. Of course, yes — that's what they do.

They've always done it and always will, and this regime has no

other way to achieve economic growth —

or rather,

no other way to fill

its budget except by raising taxes and

further robbing people and businesses.

They simply don't have any other option. In the end,

they just can't

get money in any way except

by taking it out of your pocket.

And of course state monopolies, first and foremost

the housing and utilities sector — or rather, in that

state, private monopolies too — well, they're

a sacred cow for them. They'll do

whatever they want, and they'll keep

raising taxes, and then they'll keep

raising them. It's very interesting how the authorities

are reacting.

[music]

are nervous about how this "zeroing out"

was received. Probably everyone

would agree that

Putin, generally speaking, from the standpoint

of his own goals, did not achieve what he wanted. He wanted

there to be

a feeling in society that

once again, truly, everyone

came out and voted for Putin, supported Putin —

a new round of that familiar line:

"Well yes, of course there was fraud, but

it's obvious that even in a fair election

Putin would have won." And now, perhaps

for the first time, that feeling

doesn't exist for anyone — and first of all

Putin himself doesn't have it. On the contrary, there is

an understanding that many people

didn't go to the referendum because he would have lost,

and that they stuffed in so many votes because otherwise he

would have lost. And there is both irritation and

among the elite a clear realization that

the "Putin magic" no longer works, and

therefore

it's funny to watch how this whole

propaganda machine is now trying

to convince us how the whole

country is rejoicing over the results of this

referendum. The best example is, of course,

the round dance in support of Putin on

Channel One.

I'll put it in the corner for you. They showed how

residents of Yakutia (Sakha Republic) literally formed a round dance

in support of Putin, a round dance in support

of adopting the Constitution. Twelve seconds, in the corner.

Nearly a dozen and a half regions

supported the amendment on protecting the cultural

identity of all peoples. Residents of Yakutia

staged a round dance whose scale is best

appreciated in footage shot by

a drone.

See how wonderfully the residents of

Yakutia are celebrating? But here's what's important:

there was a bit of sleight of hand here, because in Yakutia

the vote actually went rather badly for them, and the mayor

of Yakutsk, Sardana

Avksentyeva — I hope I'm pronouncing

her name and patronymic correctly — she

even publicly posted her ballot

showing that she had voted against it. So even there,

in Yakutia itself, residents supposedly

came out and started dancing in circles — except

it turned out that all this footage was from 2017.

That is, they really — can you imagine? —

took an old recording and started airing it on

Channel One, saying that this was

the rejoicing of Yakutia's residents over

the adoption of the Constitution.

Twenty-three seconds of how this report

was shown back in 2017.

[music]

[music]

[applause]

[music]

They absolutely, desperately needed to show exactly this,

and the captions were basically saying: yes, that's the translation.

Long live—it's all just shouting, yes.

"Long live Vladimir Putin," but who there

can translate it?

The seventeenth year, a national holiday.

A dance at the national—at this, at this.

At this celebration, and now they are presenting it

as joy and support for Putin, because

they want to show that—but there is no

joy at all, and there is no sense in

society of it, and so they are trying to prove to society

that, guys, don't believe what

it seems to you—actually, the whole

country is incredibly happy. Just look at

Yakutia, and of course, well, that's at least the basic

foundation of this whole thing, and elsewhere it is already quite

virtuosic. And of course, this was explained to us

by the well-known TV host and State Duma deputy

who used to be a television presenter,

Pyotr Tolstoy. Because, fine, you can

show old video footage and lie outright

that these people are rejoicing because of

Putin, but Tolstoy went so far as to reach, well,

that stage we had, after all, been waiting for—

when they would say to us directly that people

died in the war 75 years ago so that

Putin could now pass his amendments.

Tolstoy did, after all, do it, because, well,

go ask—they died there,

speaking at the opening of the memorial, and you could just hear it—

Tolstoy came out and flat-out

said that back then they were dying so that

the people of Russia could now

adopt the Constitution and the amendments

they supposedly want to adopt. Let's

listen to a minute and a half

of a story about Soviet soldiers who

were dying for Putin in 1943.

You know, the president, against the backdrop of this

majestic monument, said

important words about the uniqueness of our

civilization and about the sovereignty of our

country. One million three hundred thousand people who

died gave their lives for the freedom

of our homeland long ago. They did it

so that the next generation would have

the freedom to choose the path along which

the country would go.

They tried to deprive us of that freedom; they tried

to impose

foreign values on us in the 1990s, and in many ways

even today most of our elite lives

by clichés that were formed

20 or 30 years ago.

A new Constitution

and the amendments to the Constitution make this

document absolutely fundamental and

new. This is a new step in the development of our

country; it is an opportunity for Russia

to go its own way. It is the enshrinement in

the country's basic law of those principles, those

values for which, properly speaking,

our ancestors gave their lives. Before these

amendments,

our basic law had a kind of

half-measure character; it had neither

a national idea nor a national spirit

that is inherent to our country and without

which Russia cannot develop.

That is precisely why the president spoke about

our unique civilization and about how important

sovereignty is for us—the sovereignty for which

those who died near Rzhev gave their lives.

Just an absolutely incredible line

of reasoning. Did you notice that

of course our Constitution was bad,

half-baked—you lived under it for 20 years, for 20

years Putin ruled under it, under this

Constitution. Under it he took power from Yeltsin

and the Yeltsin "family" (his inner circle), and ruled by it for 20 years,

and now it turns out that only now, finally,

what people died for

near Rzhev has been realized. It's just a complete,

absolute triumph of hypocrisy and brazenness.

They stand there with brazen faces—every second one has an account in

a Western bank, every third one has

property abroad, yet they stand there

practically swelling with their own

nobility and say that near Rzhev

people died so that they could defend here

our sovereignty. What

sovereignty? Your sovereignty is on Lake Como

that's where your sovereignty is. But I get

asked—and Gref, Alexei, asks: "So, Alexei,

you've been fighting the regime..." It kind of strikes me.

Igor asks: "Alexei, you've been dealing with

the regime for more than 10 years—compare what it was like then and how

they are now, how it happened that it turned out this way."

It's not exactly that I've been fighting the regime for 10 years, but

rather that I simply live my life,

a normal life, and within that normal

life I don't like what

is happening, and I do everything possible

to say, first, to those in power that I

do not like what they are doing, and second,

to organize people around me for

the struggle against this government. So you could say

that in this way I am fighting the regime. I

just see it this way: I simply

live the life of a normal person. But

Igor noted something absolutely correctly:

they've become unbelievably deranged. It was impossible

to imagine 10 years ago that a

United Russia member would come out and say that people died near

Rzhev so that Putin could make

his amendments. Years ago, for something like that,

someone might have gotten punched in the face. Now it's

normal. Well, because what else

are they supposed to say to strengthen their

power? It's like drug addiction—you need an ever

bigger and bigger dose, more and more

pathos. They need something—before, they

could say that Putin

—I don't know—saved Russia from hunger; then

they said that Putin saved Russia from

collapse; and then they said that Putin

is saving Russia from a hostile external

environment. Now they have to say

that Putin is doing this because

Soldiers were dying, and that was exactly what it was for.

Otherwise it doesn't work — only upward.

The degradation happens in these sudden jumps.

Downward, while Euronews-style pomposity is tied up with all of this.

the pompousness of the lies

it only keeps growing, and that is very

it is very noticeable, and it will keep increasing further

it will intensify, but besides that they are frantically

Why? Because by now even those people

who used to be pointedly

apolitical,

not anymore — now they are simply talking about it.

And they talk about it in a very, very telling way.

There is this famous blogger, +100500,

Maxim Golopolosov.

You all know him, of course — one of the most

well-known video bloggers on YouTube.

In his latest episode, what does he talk about?

Funny videos and so on, but he talks

about the vote, and he says, understanding that

this topic is funnier,

more absurd, and somehow more

provocatively attention-grabbing than, say,

I don't know, photos of cats or funny

videos of men falling over, because

what Panfilova did is far

funnier than photos of drunk men falling

over. One minute of +100500 talks about it.

+100500 talks about the “reset.” Hey there,

people — so, Putin drank an elixir

of renewal in the form of constitutional amendments,

the vote on which concluded

this week, and without any difficulty

he reset himself with a result of almost 78

percent in favor

and 22 against, according to data as of July 2.

All right, and in my view, being surprised by such

triumphant numbers is altogether

pointless, considering the week

of early voting, the lack

of proper oversight, and all this

abundance and variety of all kinds

of polling-station options. This whole

thing with the polling stations, by the way, absolutely

killed me: on a tree stump, on a

rock, on a bench, and in a tent,

after getting past two mini-bosses first — you could even

vote out in an open field, and

next door by a combine harvester.

And also on a bus, in a car trunk,

on a car hood, on another tree stump, well,

and on a sports ground.

In short, our turbo-managers

decided not to bother at all with making it

look even remotely

decent or reasonable.

Well, as the amendments were, so was the voting.

Basically, nothing new. And this is very, very

revealing: people who

had never talked about politics at all

started talking about it. And all these Petrs

and Tolstys and everyone else — they

feel it too. I don't know, their children

are watching it,

or their grandchildren are watching, and they look and think,

“Kolya (a diminutive of Nikolai),”

“what are you watching on YouTube — jokes and funny clips?

Let me watch these funny clips with you.”

And there they are being told that, basically,

our hapless rulers — what kind of constitution,

such a reset. Of course they are going crazy

because of this, and that is why they keep

convincing each other.

And they are trying to convince us that all of this

was just great. They are spending

absolutely colossal amounts of money on it.

In the previous program, I think,

I showed a video by Dud (Yury Dud), who

said he had been offered 7 million

rubles (about 70,000-80,000 USD) to run ads for the amendments

to the Constitution, and many wrote that all this

was nonsense. But this week Morgenshtern

also came out and said that he

had been offered 10 million rubles (about 100,000-115,000 USD) for the constitutional

amendments. Let's listen to 20 seconds.

Recently I got a request

to advertise these amendments to

the Constitution, and they attached 10 million.

“Did you agree?” “Of course not.” Good for him.

You know, on Instagram you actually

turned it down, because just look at how much

they are willing to spend.

Yes, we did exactly the same thing

when we saw how much they were willing to spend.

So of course they were offering 7,

10 million, 20 million — however much Buzova

was paid, I don't know, and everyone else too.

They are ready to spend enormous

amounts of money on this, but people still understand everything anyway.

When they read that this is a paid

sponsored post by Buzova, Borodina, and all

those people — that whole Instagram crowd

who will write about anything for money — it still

only creates an even stronger sense

that all of this was fake and rigged.

That is exactly why this week they were really

firing from all guns with stories about how

everyone was rejoicing — starting with this sticky

round dance of enthusiasm and ending with the absolutely splendid

dialogue between Putin and

Panfilova, where it was just...

I even posted a clip of it on my Instagram

because what a duet, what

perfectly synchronized work.

They were literally telling each other

— they understand everything, but in public

they say how wonderful it all was.

“Take note: there were no violations at all,”

“all the observers said it was very

good.” “Yes, yes, Vladimir Vladimirovich,”

“this was an example, really, a concentration

of democracy.” Why are they doing this? Because

they can feel that everyone is laughing at

this, at what happened, and they

— you know, everyone is laughing, and so they have

this staged dialogue, like,

“we don't know what you're all muttering there,”

“just listen, listen to what we are saying.”

So convincingly put, and therefore, believe me.

A little bit for us.

At 54 seconds, it's just magnificent.

the synchronized work of two hypocritical

crooks, watching how it was organized

was.

It was organized

in a modern way, properly, at

a high level, creating opportunities for

people to state their position openly

on the constitutional amendments in the highest

degree of democracy; everything was

organized, and as I understand it, with

a minimal number of violations. In

any case, observers say so,

and media representatives as well, and with

them it was necessary to work accordingly.

The voting itself

took place absolutely

freely, with unprecedented openness and

transparency, and so one must say

that the nationwide vote

became, in general, a concentrated

expression of direct democracy.

Concentrated—I insist on that.

Direct democracy—will anyone

argue with that? Yes, I'm ready to argue with you.

Pretty much everyone. And, in fact, what

you're doing—breaking up this little

comedy—

perfectly shows just how insecure they all are there.

Insecure, but this whole sort of

"concentrated, concentrated"

"I insist on it." Today, Meduza (an independent Russian media outlet)

published an excellent, actually

investigation into how

electronic voting went. Well, there

first of all, openly, just publicly,

1.5 million—one and a half million—

sets of passport data of all those

people who took part in

electronic voting. There were tens

of thousands

of already invalid passports, and some

people participated using old passport data

in that vote. That is, it's a complete

fake, a forgery. That is, they

organized the voting, including

using outdated passport data. This is

simply a completely fabricated thing, and

well, they understand that everyone knows all this, and

that's why they especially emphasize

"concentrated, concentrated" and all that.

Go read it, it's a very good

article by Meduza.

At the same time, though,

the minimal number of recorded

violations happened because there simply

weren't these

observers. But where there still

was some blatant violation,

there, of course, these violators

were met with serious punishment. Did you see

that great video where

the chairwoman of the election commission

—her name was Zoya, I think—just, well,

this clever woman walked right into the camera's view.

There were hardly any cameras, but she came up and pulled out

from under her blouse a stack

of ballots and started feeding them into

the voting machine. Let's watch.

She was stuffing ballots for 40 seconds.

Another woman was sitting by the monitor.

She put down her pen, stood up, and took her place.

The chairwoman came over, she goes and

then that other woman stood up and

pulled them out—there, you can see it—and

kept feeding them in.

What a marvelous little trick.

And the punishment, of course, was truly severe:

she was dismissed—that is,

well, not exactly fired, since where could they fire her from,

but she was removed from the post of chair

of the election commission. Well, probably

a person who was literally caught on video

pulling ballots out from under a sweater

and stuffing them into a ballot box should not

be the chair of an election

commission. But she was removed only from that

position—no criminal case, nothing.

Why? Because this is exactly what I was talking about

when I was proving to everyone that this

vote was completely fake, because

you can't prosecute her—on what grounds? In this

vote there were absolutely no rules

at all. And so this whole hysteria now,

these desperate attempts to prove to themselves

that people liked it,

are just extremely noticeable.

Nilov is absolutely right. I

heard him talk about this, and now many people

are writing about how this ferocity

of the authorities that we've seen over the last

week is, of course, connected with the fact that

things turned out not at all

as they had planned—really not at all.

That is, from the point of view of achieving

the formal result,

well yes, it was clear there would be

a result—they'd simply fabricate it and say,

"the amendments have been adopted."

They had effectively been adopted even before that, but of course

they wanted once again to crush us with

a demonstration that the masses of people

were flocking to polling stations and voting for Putin, but

this time that didn't happen at all, and it became

clear that the masses are against

Putin—or at least they do not

support him. And this moment needs to be

used, and we, guys, you and I,

have plenty to do. There are 74,000 people

watching the live broadcast.

Even more will watch later. In the fall there will be

elections in many places: 30 regions, 61 major

election campaigns. And within the framework of

Smart Voting, we cover only those

election campaigns where there are more—those

that is, in populated areas where the population

200,000 people, but there are many

small but very important things. Go to the website

for Smart Voting — there is now a section there

called “Become an Observer.” Sign up in

the Moscow Region — there will be a huge

number of election campaigns there, well, there

among the major places where Smart

Voting is active are Balashikha and Podolsk, two

huge cities where they are constantly

falsifying things. Sign up to be an observer.

You absolutely have to go vote. There is still

time to run as a candidate.

Run as a candidate. We need

to seize the moment, when right now everyone

even Putinists understand that, damn,

something has gone wrong and nobody wants

to support this government in these elections.

In September, of course, everything will be difficult. There will be

ballot stuffing, there will be fraud, there will probably be

multi-day voting almost for sure

because otherwise they will lose badly.

But we have to go, and we have to get involved. There are

a lot of us — 74,000 watching the live stream in

Russia, and across the whole country there are 90,000

polling stations. If half of you

— though many of you, of course, live in Moscow —

from Moscow you can go to the Moscow

Region, from Moscow you can go to Nizhny

Novgorod, one of the largest

cities. You can go to Tambov — and in

Tambov we have a great campaign underway.

Our team is running in the elections in Tambov.

It is a completely lawless region,

an absolutely lawless region, and our team, under the

leadership of Diana Rudakova, has simply

thrown down a challenge to the entire mafia. Let’s

watch 52 seconds of Diana Rudakova, and

yes, here is Diana Rudakova.

I am the head of Navalny’s regional headquarters,

and this fall I am running in the elections

to the Tambov City Duma from the third

electoral district.

I constantly see how city land

is handed out left and right, while almost all

deputies side with

the authorities, not the residents. Several

times, the local diocese, by deceiving residents,

tried to fence off the embankment and

the square near Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya (Soviet WWII heroine).

With the support of headquarters volunteers and concerned

citizens,

I was able to bring public attention to it

and defend these areas. By training, I am an

architect.

I know that Tambov can become more beautiful

and more comfortable for residents, and I understand what

needs to be done for that. I believe that

the final word on development issues

involving historic and green spaces should belong

to the residents, not to officials. In the City Duma,

I will push to ensure that public

hearings become more frequent. Well, what is

that you just saw? It’s not just

some small-scale platform of minor fixes, you know — “I

will push for this, I will push for

everything.” To run in an election in Tambov is

a genuinely brave civic act, because

there, they are simply bandits.

United Russia there is not just made up of officials,

but of gangsters, as in many, many other

regions.

That is why people like Diana really need your help,

people like Diana all across the country — in

Novosibirsk, Tomsk — we simply

have every opportunity to crush them there.

In Novosibirsk, an entire coalition has also

put itself forward against United Russia — everyone

has united. Go to the website nsk2020

.ru

If you live in Novosibirsk, find

your own candidate for deputy,

go out and sign for them. If you live

in a completely different region and there are no

elections, nothing at all — just promote it online,

write something, say

something.

The main thing is not to sit on the couch, because

this September there will be a small

window of opportunity. We can

break into it and widen it. The next one will come

only in the State Duma elections,

and quite possibly they will be early, but

the State Duma elections will, of course,

be important — more important than these.

But they will, of course, rig something there too, and our success

in the State Duma elections

will, of course, be determined to a large extent

by our success this September, and

that is why it is very important to take part somehow, not

to think, “What is this nonsense, who

cares, Navalny is sitting there

talking about elections in Balashikha?” Yes, they

are of fundamental importance — the elections in

Balashikha.

A big city near Moscow — in

the Moscow suburbs, it is easy to beat United Russia

in terms of votes, easy to beat them.

It is much harder to defend that victory, but

it has to be done. So right now

go to the Smart Voting website,

register, and participate in any way you can.

That is real politics. Whether we beat

United Russia in these elections or not

depends only on us, and Putin will not be able

to do anything about it. And now probably the

loudest political event — though perhaps an even

louder one was the arrest of Safronov, the former

journalist from *Kommersant* — but still,

for the elite, in terms of

political consequences, of course, the arrest

of the governor of Khabarovsk Krai, Furgal,

is the main event, the one that

really shows, quite simply,

Putin’s panic. So let’s

look at this in more detail, because it is

just a perfect

demonstration of how Putin is simply

losing his control over

who criticized the political system so harshly

He was a State Duma deputy from

Khabarovsk Krai and a member of the LDPR (Liberal Democratic Party of Russia), and there was

in the gubernatorial election a candidate from

Putin’s camp named Vyacheslav Shport, and the whole

entire administrative machine was working

for Vyacheslav Shport, and most importantly,

as they saw it, Putin represented

United Russia, so his victory was guaranteed

simply because Putin supported him

There was that photo: Putin and Shport, and that was supposed to settle everything

That solves every problem for any candidate

because supposedly the pro-Putin majority

exists everywhere, and the poorer the region, the

larger the pro-Putin majority, plus

administrative resources, plus mass

propaganda on television, and so on

and so on, and then along comes this proud

Putin heading into the gubernatorial election, a month

with his man Shport, and against him

some guy named Furgal

some kind of LDPR figure, apparently

who wasn’t even running any particularly aggressive

campaign. And what did the residents

of Khabarovsk Krai do?

They took, I don’t know, a piece of paper or

a dead cat, or just used their hand and slapped them

across the face

— Putin, United Russia, that Shport, all of them

And that insult is what led to the arrest that

happened today. And this arrest,

of course, I could say all sorts of things right now

and of course, certainly,

Governor Furgal, like any

businessman from the Russian Far East

who was involved in those rather murky

businesses like timber and scrap metal — this is

a man with a colorful past

Could he have been involved or connected

Could he have been connected with criminal

groups?

One hundred percent — like pretty much any

businessman back then, he may well have been connected

Could he be linked to some crimes,

even murders?

Sure, absolutely, he could be. The only question is:

he was a local

deputy for three years, then spent 11 years

as a State Duma deputy, and all that time we kept

hearing them shout lately: we won’t let

criminals into power, and they refuse to register

our party for elections, they don’t allow

independent candidates, because they won’t

let criminals into government. And the Interior Ministry, by the way,

said today that it turns out

they knew about the involvement

of Governor Furgal in committing

crimes — they knew very well. So why were you silent

all that time? And now they’ve simply

taken him down

because, well, of course they’ll jail him, and

we won’t see, I’m more than sure,

any serious evidence there

simply because Putin is specifically taking revenge on him

for public humiliation number one

when they slapped him across the face during

the gubernatorial election — humiliation

Public humiliation number two came in similar

regional elections, which took place

in September

These were elections for deputies to the

Khabarovsk City Duma and

for deputies to the Legislative Assembly

of Khabarovsk Krai. Let’s take a look

at the chart

Smart Voting was especially active there

in that vote — let’s look

On the left you see a kind of bar

completely red — that’s how

the deputies were elected in 2014

— all United Russia

in the Legislative Duma of Khabarovsk Krai

nothing else at all. And then 2019: Smart

Voting, and the public mood toward United

Russia — zero. United Russia there was simply

destroyed, and Furgal was part of that. He

came in and showed that, you know, if

the governor isn’t from United Russia, and on top of that

there’s Smart Voting, then United Russia

doesn’t just get a small share

— United Russia gets zero. And of course

there was no falsification there, by the way

people simply came out and once again, en masse,

slapped United Russia

and Putin across the face, really

And the third humiliation came when

they slapped them a third time — that happened

just now, on July 1, in that

nationwide vote, when turnout

there was 44 percent

one of the lowest in the country — that is, fewer than

half the residents showed up. They didn’t even bother falsifying anything there

and the result for those

Putin constitutional amendments was one of the

lowest in the country. Again, they slapped him across

the face — because the governor did not

falsify the vote

because the governor did not rig things, because

the governor was not working for United

Russia. And Governor Furgal — I would never

in any way call him

some beacon of freedom or, you know, a great

opposition figure. He’s LDPR — that’s LDPR, and that

says it all

But nevertheless, as they see it in the

Kremlin, he let the residents get out of hand, and the residents

in front of the whole rest of the country

kept smacking Putin in the face and rubbing him

face-first across the table, and they really

did not like that at all. And Furgal, of course,

is being jailed precisely because of that. I asked

Alexei Vorsin, the coordinator of our

headquarters in Khabarovsk

a truly outstanding politician and

a prominent figure in Khabarovsk Krai, who of course

the United Russia people never allow onto

any ballot — to share his

view as a local resident, a local

of an opposition politician on what is happening

Let's listen to Alexei.

One and a half minutes.

Hello everyone. Today they arrested

the governor of Khabarovsk Krai, Sergei

Furgal, and sent him to Moscow. As

the investigation claims, Furgal is accused

of organizing murders that

were carried out around 2005. Let me

remind you that by 2005, Furgal had already spent two

years serving as a deputy in the Khabarovsk

Regional Legislative Duma, and after that for 11 years

he served as a deputy in the State

Duma of the Russian Federation.

He was elected to the State Duma three times,

and not once did the security services bring

any charges against him in connection with these

crimes.

After Sergei Furgal became governor of Khabarovsk Krai in 2018,

after Sergei Furgal became governor of Khabarovsk Krai,

he began having his first problems with the security services.

After United Russia's defeat in the

regional elections, Putin's envoy to the

Far Eastern Federal District,

Yury Trutnev, summoned the governors, and

reprimanded Furgal because Furgal's approval rating

was higher than President Putin's.

In other words, from the envoy's point of view,

the governor was being blamed for the fact that

a governor's rating cannot be higher

than Putin's.

The last straw was

that in the so-called vote on

the constitutional amendments, turnout in Khabarovsk

Krai was a record-low 44

percent, the third-lowest result in all of

Russia, and accordingly Moscow's patience

ran out. They decided

to arrest the governor, which of course

caused very strong outrage among the residents

of Khabarovsk Krai. The voters of Khabarovsk

Krai, I am sure, will not tolerate such

an arrogant attitude toward them from

Putin. 74,000 people are watching us

live right now. There is a whole block of questions about

Furgal. Pasha Balakh asks me:

"Is Furgal's arrest a response to the arrest—"

Furgal's arrest is a response to all the residents

of Khabarovsk Krai, who simply

consistently, in three—I said three—

recent campaigns, did not just, well,

behave badly toward them; they simply crushed

United Russia. Just imagine:

in the regional legislative assembly, zero

members of United Russia, zero. Of course, they are simply

going crazy there; Putin is jumping to the ceiling

and squealing, and so there has to be a response

to all the residents of the region. Alexei Abramov

asks: what do you think the residents should do

in Khabarovsk Krai in order to

stand up for Furgal? I think defending him

is already impossible. Furgal entered

this system—if you live with wolves, you howl like a wolf.

Howl.

The residents of Khabarovsk Krai simply need

to keep crushing United Russia even harder.

Because this is truly arrogance, and there in

Khabarovsk Krai

there really are bandits and corrupt officials in

power in huge numbers. Our штаб (campaign office/headquarters)

is constantly publishing investigations about them.

Have they jailed even one of them? Removed even one?

No. But Furgal, for the fact that, for the fact that

people voted not quite the way they wanted,

they have already cooked up criminal cases. And

why do I say they are fabricated? Because

it is entirely possible he may have been connected

to someone there, but the way this is being presented is

just a classic. We saw this in the Yukos case

(the prosecution of the former Russian oil company Yukos), when some guys sit in

prison for eight years and then suddenly give

testimony: 'Oh, you know, in the cell with

me there was this guy, and in a

private conversation he said that

Khodorkovsky had the mayor of Nefteyugansk killed.'

It is precisely on testimony like that that

Pichugin is serving time, and

they issued

all sorts of rulings in the Yukos case.

It's just that some people testify that

'we knew.' Come on—they sit there for 15

years; for three cartons of cigarettes they will do anything.

The same thing, absolutely the same thing,

we recently saw with Bykov in

Krasnoyarsk Krai.

Exactly the same: some people

suddenly start giving testimony. By the way,

'Well, we knew—once, during a prison transfer,

someone told me that Bykov

killed 17 people,' and now a criminal case has been opened against Bykov.

A criminal case has been opened.

Because he needs to be removed from the election. The

same thing is happening here with Furgal: some

people suddenly—they were jailed there, or they had been

sitting there, then they came to their senses and gave the 'correct'

testimony, suddenly remembering that Furgal

killed some people 15 years ago. If he really

was involved in these

murders, then we will probably see some

evidence—we should see it. But I

am more than sure that no

evidence, apart from this kind of

words from some people who were sitting

somewhere in a cell, we will see absolutely none.

A few questions about Zhirinovsky: what

do you think about the statements

made by Zhirinovsky?

[Unclear fragment]

With a username like that, you need to be handled manually in Russia.

What do you think about Zhirinovsky and his

possible departure from the LDPR over Furgal? Zhirinovsky

said today that possibly the entire faction

would surrender their mandates in protest. Of course they

will not do that.

Roizman said it correctly today:

Zhirinovsky says whatever he wants, but he does

only what he is told to do in the Kremlin.

Of course, this is a major blow to the LDPR, because

that they suddenly ended up with a governor

who beat the United Russia candidate, and they wiped out

United Russia there completely, and now

people there are wiping their feet on them, so

Zhirinovsky is certainly making noise, but he will

do nothing about it, of that I am absolutely

not

in no doubt. To wrap up the Furgal topic,

I just found this recording for you, the one about

which Vorsa mentioned in his video. So

now I’m going to play it for you.

It’s a recorded conversation between the then

presidential envoy Trutnev and a dollar

millionaire, by the way,

an official multimillionaire, and this involves

Furgal. And on this recording

you will hear exactly the kind of thing governors are jailed for

— Furgal included. It’s a dialogue about

why this is happening there. Furgal explains that

you’re coming after me, opening criminal cases

against my relatives,

launching all this, and because of that, a movement is already starting in the region:

“Let’s defend the governor.” And here

is Trutnev’s response to that little

monologue of his — simply a complete and

exhaustive explanation of why today

Furgal was arrested with such pomp.

Let’s listen. Five seconds in, what’s being said

is already beyond the pale,

honestly, just beyond even

the bounds of reason. They are simply starting to

deliberately destroy the ratings — the ratings

of the authorities, the government, the rating

of the president.

And they’re doing it in a targeted, proper,

professional way. And people coming in from

Moscow... I didn’t quite understand, though,

why I should interfere, because you

said a “Let’s defend the governor” movement is forming.

So they’re defending you, relatively speaking.

Don’t you want to see what’s

happening? Because, you see,

just a second, because by the

numbers, the story looks very

clear: your rating is growing, while the president’s rating

is falling. So you see, that kind of

politics — not me, not Alexander, Alexander...

someone else told me that, actually.

That’s it. There you have the whole explanation, you see.

For the presidential envoy, what looks sad is not that

salaries in Khabarovsk Krai are very low

— and they really are very low — or that there are no decent jobs,

that people are getting involved in some kind of

I don’t know, illegal

logging, because again, there’s no work,

and everyone is leaving. That’s not

the problem. What makes the situation look sad is that

your rating is rising, while the president’s rating

is falling. That’s all. That’s the main thing.

That is the main crime a politician

can commit in Russia.

Especially a politician holding an

official post. And that is the main thing

the entire power vertical is engaged in:

making sure the president’s approval rating

doesn’t fall. And Furgal — well, he is what he is,

flesh and blood of Khabarovsk Krai,

and the local residents said: yes, let him be governor

rather than those rotten United Russia people. That’s it.

And Putin’s rating falls — that’s the whole calculation.

He committed the crime, so now

he’ll go away for 15 years. I have not the slightest doubt that

it will just be some kind of

show trial, without any real

evidence. They’ll just say something like:

“Agent Cornflower, Agent Daisy, in the cell,”

secret witnesses in the cell reported

that Furgal killed everyone there; they personally

saw it — and that’ll be it. At the same time, I don’t have any

great love for this Furgal.

Well, the LDPR (Liberal Democratic Party of Russia) is a strange bunch too, not exactly saints.

But they elected him. They themselves elected him. So

my appeal to all residents of Khabarovsk Krai

— some of you are probably watching me now,

despite the fact that it’s already very,

very late at night there, or even early morning — but

simply this:

you won’t have elections this September anymore,

probably, yes; the next election is only in

a year. Well then, you need to vote out

any Putin-backed governor, any one of them, and

that’s it. All of Khabarovsk Krai should now

do everything possible to help ensure

that everywhere in the Far East, in

Siberia, and elsewhere, United Russia candidates are also

crushed at the polls.

Because there is no other way to respond

to this kind of thuggery.

If you have some

claims, present the evidence.

If there is evidence, then arrest him — not

because his rating is higher than Putin’s. So

I’m being asked:

“Pasha Bulakhov again: do you yourself expect

repression ahead of Smart

Voting?” Pasha, what do you mean, “expect”?

Artyom Ionov,

who was working on these broadcasts,

was abducted and taken away. Right now, what’s happening is just

completely outrageous.

There’s a lot to say about Artyom Leonov,

then they abducted him and took him into the army. The guy has

asthma; he has all the documents proving it,

and right now this is what’s happening to him:

specifically, we are trying to get to him

some SIM cards and a phone, because any

soldier — yes, if he’s already been

conscripted and has taken the oath —

can have a phone and a SIM card, he can

make calls. But they gave him nothing at all, they

broke everything.

They lied to him, told him they were taking him to a hospital.

He said, “Take me to the hospital, let them examine me,”

“do the tests and you’ll see that I can’t

serve.”

But after saying they would take him to the hospital in

Blagoveshchensk, they took him to

Chukotka, to a settlement called

coal mines

Well, I mean, you understand, someone is behind this,

coming up with it in the Presidential Administration.

Obviously, it’s not the Ministry of

Defense, because he was

detained by the FSB and handed over by the FSB to the army.

And so there was someone sitting there,

some smirking Kiriyenko, or—I don’t know who,

who decided to ship one person off to Novaya Zemlya (a remote Russian Arctic archipelago), and

you took another to the settlement of Ugolnye Kopi

in Chukotka, where, well,

well, people live there too, and someone serves there, but

it’s obvious why they did it.

Automatically, you see, to send someone somewhere

where the sun comes out twice a year—that’s

just abuse. If you don’t punish this, it will

continue, and the pressure will keep building.

Well, the pressure will grow, but I’m urging you

to crush United Russia.

And more than that, I believe that together we

will be able to crush United Russia in a number of

regions. In some regions, that will be

very difficult, but we have to fight for it.

And I call on you to take to the streets if

they start falsifying things again.

Of course, we can’t just sit by and do nothing.

And what happened this week—

well, of course, this is really a kind of Putin-style

hysteria. He wanted July 1

this whole sequence of events around

the vote,

the Immortal Regiment (a Russian commemorative march honoring WWII veterans), to be a time of

triumph.

After 20 years in power, he wanted to show

what a great approval rating he had, and with a new

springboard, soar upward. But the springboard

that Ella Pamfilova (head of Russia’s Central Election Commission) gave him turned out to be so

bad that when Putin took off, he landed

face-first in the mud, in a puddle, and now he’s wallowing in it.

And of course he’s very uncomfortable in that puddle.

That’s why this hysteria is starting, and why

there’s this simply insane

number of arrests and searches

this week. It very clearly

is shown by what’s happening with Pyotr Verzilov.

—

He is the founder of one of the best media outlets in

Russia today, Mediazona.

Of course, Verzilov keeps jokingly boasting

that over these two days

he’s had more searches than I ever did—and that’s true.

These concentrated eight searches

took place at his home, at his parents’ home, and at the homes of some

of his parents’ acquaintances. In that sense,

he definitely beat me in terms of the number

of searches over a given period of time.

But it shows one thing clearly: they hate

Mediazona as a media outlet,

an independent publication that doesn’t ask anyone for

anything. It writes about

political prisoners and has become

an influential media outlet.

And this bearded, incomprehensible Verzilov,

from their point of view, is some kind of

weirdo, a junkie, someone who posed

naked in some museum—he supposedly has no right at all

to be involved in anything connected with

politics. And so they’re simply very

outraged, and within the limits of their imagination they’re now

carrying out endless searches on him,

and it’s not clear what they’re even looking for. Well, they found

a Canadian passport that he received in childhood

because he was a child. As I understand it,

his parents were working there, in

Canada, at the time, so naturally he

ended up with that passport. And now they’ve opened

a criminal case

because he failed to notify the authorities about this

passport. We asked Pyotr Verzilov

to record, exclusively for our program,

two minutes on what is happening

around him.

Today, after yet another one of the

searches, Verzilov was taken for a psychiatric

evaluation, and apparently somewhere there, at the psychiatric

hospital, after the evaluation, he recorded for us

these two minutes.

Hi everyone. Another investigative procedure has just ended for me

as part of

my grand, consolidated

criminal case,

which, just for a moment, combines

the criminal cases on the mass unrest of July 27,

2019,

the alleged assault on law enforcement

officers, and—attention—

the criminal case over my failure to report

my Canadian passport. All three of these

enormous events have now been rolled into

one single criminal case, under which

for effectively the third week now

they’ve been trying to torment me somehow,

to harass me, to make me undergo some

extremely difficult, insane procedures.

Everything that has been happening to me over the last three

weeks—from giving me 15 days for swearing,

to the alleged assault on a provocateur police officer,

and ending with yesterday’s search of the apartment

of my mother’s friend—all of this is simply

indescribable. These events, which in our

usual

even by our usual Russian

criminal-justice reality—even for

that reality, this is some new peak of absurdity

and madness that is now unfolding

in relation to me over these now

almost three weeks. It’s impossible

to say exactly why this is being done; one can only

only

draw the general conclusion that they have

developed a desire to make my life harder,

to put pressure on me, and to send a signal to all

of society: this is what happens if you behave like this,

like Verzilov. Under no circumstances

should you do that—or there will be criminal cases even at your mother’s friends’ homes.

There will be criminal

proceedings and all the rest. But none of this

will work, and we will win anyway.

We’ll be stronger than all of them, 38 times over.

Hooray, maybe even 39 times over. Good for me.

I like Verzilov’s attitude — he’s holding up well.

He’s staying upbeat. I know from personal experience that searches

are a pretty unpleasant thing, especially

in a situation where you’re serving 15 days in detention and then

they take you to a search in another region,

all the more so when searches are being carried out at your

parents’ home, or at the homes of your parents’ acquaintances. It’s always

very uncomfortable. No one blames you for any of this,

but that doesn’t make it any easier when they come and

take away computers, phones — everything.

They take things away from children too. It’s

a pretty unpleasant situation. But everyone else should

understand that this is being done

to intimidate you. There are 76,000 people

watching this live, and it’s being done so that

you’ll get scared and won’t sign up

as an election observer, won’t get involved in politics, won’t

do anything like that, won’t go and take part

in smart voting. A search is being conducted at

Verzilov’s place, and that’s why today, in connection with

Open Russia, this is sheer lawlessness.

Mass searches are being carried out there — searches at everyone’s homes:

Galyamina’s,

all the representatives of Open Russia’s,

Pivovarov’s, Usmanova’s,

Olga Gorelik’s, Prostakov’s — and many other people’s.

Searches are being carried out. It’s basically

meaningless, within the framework of a criminal case

against Yukos from 2003. Everyone being searched today

was either still in school back then or

hadn’t even started school yet at the time.

But these searches are being carried out for one reason: so that everyone

gets scared.

So there’s no need to be afraid. They can’t carry out searches on everyone,

that’s impossible, and no one

will be able to do it. The turning point

will come when we understand that there are

so many of us that they can do

absolutely nothing to us. Verzilov

will endure it.

And I’ll endure it too. Will there be more

pressure, more repression? Of course.

There’s much more of it. For example, today in

Kurgan, our coordinator is likewise being

targeted with a criminal case, allegedly because he

is evading the military draft office.

That’s the only thing they can do:

harass specific people with targeted pressure and repression,

torment particular individuals. But it’s impossible

to do this even to thousands of people — that’s

something we need to understand very clearly. Here, I’m being asked

by someone from Dosage... or Vian...

In our city there will be elections, but

there is no regional Navalny штаб (campaign office).

I’d like to become an observer — where

should I apply?

We have campaign offices in 41 regions,

and elections

are taking place in a number of regions, including

some with very promising races. And where we don’t have our

offices — Komi, for example, is a great region where

United Russia could simply be crushed.

But as it happens, we don’t have an office in

Komi. What you need to do is the following:

go to the Smart Voting website — the link

is below. A section has appeared there: “Become

an Observer.” Go there,

register, and let us know that you

want to be an observer. And after that, we

will move on — it won’t be a simple process.

We’ll have to coordinate and organize things,

find people who can issue the necessary referrals,

so there will still be a huge, huge

amount of work for us to do.

But the main thing is for us to see that you

want to be an observer, that you want

to monitor and campaign.

That is of fundamental importance. Again,

Moscow, Moscow Region.

There are 76,000 people watching live, half of them from

Moscow.

If a third of that half — 10,000

people — start from tomorrow

working on the elections in the Moscow Region,

we will just absolutely

wipe out United Russia there — just wipe them out.

And from you, we only need, I don’t know,

15 minutes a day, 15 minutes

a day.

So please, please, just don’t

be lazy.

And against the backdrop of all this, of course, amid the absolutely

lawless things that have been

happening this week, I noticed

a completely astonishing piece of news about

the authorities’ loved ones. Verzilov is being searched,

Open Russia activists are being jailed, our guys are being tormented,

people are being abducted and taken off to the settlement of

Ugolnye Kopi.

But remember, some time ago there was

one of the most popular videos about

a search at the home of the regional head

of Rostekhnadzor (Russia’s federal environmental, technological, and nuclear oversight agency).

He was the head of Rostekhnadzor for the Northwest, and it was

a very popular video because when they

came to his home with a search, you could see that

the entire apartment was stuffed with money.

I mean, it was literally everywhere, and there were

lots of video recordings. I’ll show you one of them.

A man named Grigory Slabikov

was detained in May 2018, and he was accused —

or rather, excuse me, accused of involvement in

the theft of nearly 6 billion rubles (about tens of millions of U.S. dollars), and

several billion rubles were apparently found

right there in his home. Judging by the photos

obtained by our colleagues,

Grigory Slabikov has a weakness for

elite alcohol and expensive wristwatches. On the

floor there were also stacks of banknotes seized in various

currencies. Initially, the money had been chaotically

scattered across bookshelves, among clothes,

in shoes, or simply lying on the table.

Surprisingly, many of the envelopes with

cash had not even been opened. This

may suggest that keeping track

of his illegal funds was beyond the apartment’s owner.

He didn’t even have time—this person simply had

an apartment filled with cash, in bank-wrapped

bundles, because there was just so much money

that there wasn’t even time to unwrap it.

The bundles are just lying there. What’s happening to him?

It’s as if, somehow—I don’t even know how to put it—

they barely touched him.

The law enforcement system isn’t crushing him at all—he’s sitting under

house arrest, not even in a cell, and with him there’s

the daughter who helped him pull off all these schemes. And

this week the court

eased her restrictions: she had been

under house arrest, and that was replaced with

a lighter measure—or rather,

the pretrial restriction was changed to a ban on certain

actions. Now it’s just a ban on certain

actions, like

you must not contact your

accomplices, or you may not communicate with

certain people. In other words, her house

arrest was eased. These people stole billions,

stuffed their apartment with cash, but they are not

socially dangerous from the point of view

of Putin’s regime.

They didn’t do anything truly terrible,

they didn’t undermine

Vladimir Putin’s approval rating. They were ready

to rig elections—they were the good guys,

so of course everything should be fine for them too.

Whereas people like Verzilov and Open Russia activists

are enemies of the state. And these facts—

they need to be used, they need to be

shown, because most people

simply have no idea about this.

And by the way, the nationwide vote

showed us very clearly that here,

just as I said on my programs, and

the results confirmed it, some 40 to 50

percent of people didn’t even know that

this was about resetting Putin’s term limits.

And now it may seem to you that everyone knows how awful

United Russia is,

or that they know about that guy from

Rostekhnadzor who stole billions and is sitting under

house arrest. They don’t know this. And when you tell them,

when you explain it,

you are doing very useful and practically

important work, because you are destroying

Putin’s ruling party in these very

important elections. Now, I’ve gotten a lot

of questions about Safronov. I left this

topic for the end. Why? Because many of

you—the most attentive ones—noticed

that I hadn’t said anything about the

detention

and arrest of former *Kommersant* journalist

Ivan Safronov, who was arrested on

espionage charges. Well, let’s

watch the July 27 video of how he was

detained near his home. Let’s

take a look.

Ivan Safronov was arrested. He is accused

of treason, of engaging in

espionage, and of passing some important secret

documents to what, it now turns out, was

Czech intelligence, which in turn

was working for the CIA. I said nothing about

this

because, let me be honest and frank,

I’m not exactly thrilled, let’s put it that way, about

having to defend him—

Safronov, to be honest—because, well,

in the whole campaign unfolding around him

there is a lot that is

right. And of course, with regard to any person,

the first thing

we must say is that we

demand an open and honest

investigation. If he is a spy and a traitor,

show the evidence. But if instead of evidence you have

only ‘it’s secret, it’s

secret, it’s secret,’ then that won’t do.

At the same time, however, I consider it

absolutely dishonest and hypocritical when

we are told that

‘another journalist has been arrested, let’s

defend a journalist.’ Well, Ivan Safronov is

an adviser to Rogozin; he is a Roscosmos PR man,

a person who in 2020 goes

to work for Roscosmos to handle PR

for Rogozin. So here we have Rogozin sitting

at the head of Roscosmos—a pointless journalist—and

they hired another one just like him,

another pointless journalist who would

do PR for Rogozin.

He was officially hired to work there.

Now let’s watch another video,

a recording of the detention of this journalist guy

who was given a Mercedes worth 5

million rubles. There he is, walking up to

that Mercedes near his home. So this is

not some journalist, but a nice little bureaucratic

type with a folder. He opens the door of his

Mercedes,

and FSB officers run up to him and

arrest him. I mean, I don’t—I don’t

know Ivan Safronov personally, I haven’t

been closely following

his journalistic work.

He did, however, have some fairly high-profile

articles.

But honestly, a person who in 2020

went to work as Rogozin’s PR man,

after all those tweets about how Rogozin

dreamed of getting into the trenches in Sloviansk (a city in Ukraine),

and of being there as one of

those trench fighters, and that no

official posts were needed by him—and after all

those articles and our investigations into

Rogozin’s absolutely colossal salaries,

after the numerous

investigations by Sobol into how everything was

looted at the Vostochny Cosmodrome,

after the fact that now Roscosmos’s main project

and Rogozin’s main project is

to build, on the territory of the Khrunichev plant,

an office complex with luxury

housing.

some kind of gi- giant rockets, well,

I mean, instead of space, they’re busy with

property development, and Rogozin is spouting some kind of

nonsense about endless trampolines. Let’s

— we have that video about the trampoline, can we

play it, just to remind people?

Show us the trampoline. Despite the sanctions,

they decided to extend cooperation on the ISS

until 2024, although there had been talk of

ending that cooperation

in 2020. Russia still

continues to transport American

astronauts and other astronauts to the ISS

using our launch vehicles, although there had been

talk of suggesting that they

use a trampoline instead of spacecraft

to get to the ISS.

And that’s why Ivan Safronov ended up at

Roscosmos, because Rogozin talks

a lot of nonsense — he needed a PR man who

would help him smooth things over, and in

that sense Safronov became a typical

thoroughly state-loyal

PR operative. Go to his Twitter and you’ll

see zero criticism of Putin’s rule, not

a single word in support of his own

fellow journalists, specifically

Prokopyeva, because he was

doing just fine. And I see a lot of good,

honest journalists there.

They worked together with Safronov,

they know him, they want to support him.

They drank with him together at Mayak,

a well-known hangout where

journalists used to gather, and Meduza people worked there too,

there are personal ties, friendships. They write: ‘Vanya

just loves space.’ Vanya just loves

money, and that’s why Vanya went to work at

Roscosmos. And a person who goes

to work as the PR man for the adviser to Roscosmos —

for Rogozin’s adviser, excuse me —

sorry, I’m getting worked up about this again —

that person has no

moral principles whatsoever, and that person has

not the slightest conscience. You can’t

take the words out of the song.

Despite that, I absolutely demand

that Safronov receive a normal,

honest, open trial.

I think it’s dishonest when, all in one breath,

people come out in T-shirts saying

‘Freedom for journalists. Safronov.’

But what about Frenkel and Prokopyeva?

Safronov — excuse me — Prokopyeva did not

go work as a press secretary for

the National Guard (Rosgvardiya).

And Frenkel did not work as a PR person for the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN), while

they were doing their

journalistic work.

Safronov was a fine Putin-era

official; he was completely

blind — he paid no attention

to any lawlessness from the moment

he landed a cushy job at

Roscosmos, got his Mercedes worth 5

million rubles, and probably some

very large salary. Now what happened to him

has happened, and the position here

should, I think,

consist of the following elements. First:

yes, we understand the character

of Safronov himself, who worked in

the Kremlin press pool and who was working

most recently at Roscosmos.

Nevertheless, these recent espionage

cases that we’ve seen involving

scientists and various other people —

to put it mildly, they raise many, many

questions, because all of them, absolutely

all of them, follow the exact same

pattern. So, this person — some

Ivanov or whoever — is accused of espionage because

he passed on secret information

to some secret CIA spy or whoever —

and what information was it? Well, that information

was included in the list of secret

information constituting a state

secret.