Poklonskaya inspires terrorist attacks, Kadyrov harms Muslims, and elections require a smart strategy

[music]

Good evening. It’s 8:18 p.m. in Moscow, which means

that, as usual, we’re in the Navalny Live studio, and

Alexei Navalny is here to

discuss the latest news with you and

answer all your questions. Please write to me

on Twitter using the hashtag

#Navalny2018. But I already have the first question

in front of me, and it goes like this:

Where’s Kira? What happened to Kira

Yarmysh, who used to sit over here on this side

and helped with the live broadcasts?

Did we really end up driving her away from

the broadcasts for poor hosting? No, we all praised her

and didn’t drive her away. It’s just that Kira

came to me two hours ago and said

she had flooded her neighbors’ apartment, and emergency workers

were breaking down doors. That made me

think for a moment: how does

real television handle this sort of thing? Well,

how can I explain it to you... yes,

on radio you can probably replace a person,

but with television, if

someone’s door is being broken down by emergency workers and they need

to go save their neighbors from flooding,

what happens then? And then I realized that on

Russian television, this problem

is solved very simply:

they just don’t have live broadcasts. Which means

Navalny Live is much better than all

the other TV channels. Please send me

your questions; I’ll try

to catch them because they’re flying by

at tremendous speed. And here our team is also helping us

out.

The news item I wanted to start with, and wanted

to discuss with you,

we just posted recently, because

this article came out.

It’s a big, solid article—maybe even

an investigation—on the website Znak.

It’s about tablets. You probably remember quite well

that some time ago, first

Rosnano, and then Rostec—these

state corporations—announced that

they would supply Russian schools with

wonderful tablets,

marvelous Russian-made devices, and

all Russian children would be happy

because they would get tablets and wouldn’t need

to carry textbooks. And they showed

how it worked, basically:

first Chubais, then the people from

the tech sector, met with Putin

and showed him these tablets, bending them like this,

all cool and flexible, and everyone said,

“What a marvel—Russian tablets!” So, starting

this September 1, a pilot project was launched

by the company Rostec—well,

actually, a fairly large-scale pilot

project. Around 300

million rubles (about $5 million at the time) were spent on it, and they plan to spend

even more. You can now see on your screens

these very tablets. They were

supplied to some schools

in the Sverdlovsk region, in four municipalities, and

it turned out—as reported today by

Znak—that

these “Russian” tablets,

innovative, advanced, supposedly developed

by the best Russian engineers, turned out to be

American tablets—outdated

American e-tablets, in fact. What’s more,

they were supplied at a price roughly ten times

higher than what you can

go on eBay right now and buy them for. These

tablets retail online

for about 1,800 rubles (around $30), while

according to the publication, the Russian state purchase

was somewhere around 24,000 rubles (about $400). But

in any case, on the open market this

tablet is very easy to buy because

it’s simply obsolete—nobody wants it.

This is a device that was released seven years

ago. It’s bad, it’s slow—well, not even

just bad; let’s say plainly, it does not

meet the realities of today. The article

very interestingly describes

a teacher who says, “Well yes, it’s not

terrible, but it takes

about three minutes to boot.” Wonderful.

In 2007, maybe. But in 2017, at a price close

to the price

of an iPad, we’re giving our own

children, with our own money,

obsolete tablets that

take three minutes to boot. And in this story

you can see the whole Russian Federation

—the Putin-era Russian Federation—

in its eighteenth year of existence, with all

its monstrous theft. But in this situation,

what seems even more interesting to me is this

brazen ease, this hypocrisy and deceit. But

look, they’re crooks, they stole a ton

of money, they made all kinds of promises, and

then decided to supply American tablets

instead of Russian ones. But how did the outlet

Znak discover this? It’s not like

they took one apart and somewhere on

a microchip found some label—no,

right there on the tablet itself

the name was written in Latin

letters. As I understand it, they simply

googled it or

something like that and found it. I’m not

sure I can pronounce

the name of this device correctly—read

the article. I’d really like to know how they planned to hide it.

I mean, these “Russian”

technologies—they’ll first supply them to

a few dozen schools, they’ve already spent 300

million rubles (about $5 million), then they’ll

start getting billions from the budget and

supplying these tablets to tens of thousands,

hundreds of thousands of Russian schoolchildren, and nobody

will notice that these aren’t Russian

tablets at all, but American ones? And nobody will

think to just type it into Google?

look up the name and see how much it costs

and discover that it costs 1,800 rubles, not

24,000 rubles, and this is happening

right here in our country, as we speak

but you won’t hear about this on television

someone I know wrote about it, and probably quite a lot

more will be published about it tomorrow

there will be reposts, jokes, wisecracks,

and doctored memes online, but all of it in

those niche pro-opposition and semi-

opposition outlets; the broader public most likely

won’t find out about it, at least not right away

They’ll learn gradually, because schoolchildren will

complain about these tablets in Russia,

and parents will be furious because of these

tablets.

But overall, what should happen?

Chemezov should probably be fired; there should

at the very least be an investigation of the people

who should be brought to criminal

liability. Generally speaking, this is a scandal

on a global scale: hundreds of millions of rubles

spent on a “Russian-made” development that turned out to be

an ordinary tablet. Nothing is happening, and

most likely nothing will happen—well, at least none

of the things

we expect in a chain of events where

someone gets punished, where someone is held

accountable.

I think it’s great news. Please help out—

be sure to read this article and

share it. Maybe share this broadcast too,

the one where I talk about the miracle

tablet, so that more people

find out about it. The parents of these

students shouldn’t just be annoyed that it’s

an awkward, heavy tablet—they should

understand how much they paid

out of their own pockets for this fraud.

This isn’t just overpaying for the

tablet itself; it’s also the steady stream of salaries

for the management of the state corporation Rostec

that pulls off similar schemes in every

project. You remember—

they wanted to release a killer of

not just smartphones, but a killer of

iPhones, and so on and so forth. There was a lot

of that kind of talk, and there’s nothing—nothing

ever appears except new giant dachas (country houses)

except new

villas on the French Riviera that are being built

by Russian officials. So, with

municipal elections just around the corner,

say something about it—I’ll keep talking about it.

Valery Pankrukhin and Kirill

Sorokin write in praising my appearance

at the Chatham House-style event

Take a look at it—it’s up on the main

channel if you’re interested in the company’s trajectory.

I talk there about quite a few different things,

including answering the question of what we

will do if I’m not registered as a candidate.

Cherkass says: Vovka Putin (a mocking form of Vladimir) gave

Venezuela $8 billion, while at the school where

my brother studies, they don’t provide textbooks—there

aren’t enough, and they say: buy them yourselves. I suggest

Putin sell his own kidney and send the money

to the Syrians in the name of great-power glory. I

am afraid you may be exaggerating

about having to buy textbooks outright.

As far as I know, the basic

textbooks are provided free of charge to all students.

By the way, write in

if at your school you personally

are being forced to buy textbooks with your own money—

I mean the core textbooks. But essentially

the person is right: if Putin

likes doing all these things so much,

financing Venezuela, then let him sell

his own

organs—that would at least be honest.

As for whether the hearings in Strasbourg

will lead to any kind of result,

in Strasbourg, where I recently returned from,

you all probably saw the great video of how

I was being draped with sausages at

Domodedovo Airport.

Those were hearings about how certain

countries—not just Russia, but also

Georgia and Azerbaijan—fail to comply with rulings

of the European Court, and I was briefing not

journalists, but members of the committee,

the authorized representatives of the Committee

of Ministers, who will be considering

this case officially on September 19 and 21.

We’ll see what comes of it.

The main topic, as it seems to me, of last

week was very important for the country as a whole,

and, as it seemed to me, it was

still not covered sufficiently, although

people talked about it a lot. It was

the largest terrorist attack they wanted

to carry out in Yekaterinburg. I believe that

it cannot be treated as anything other

than that, despite the authorities’ categorical

refusal to recognize and treat it

as a terrorist attack. It is barely covered on

the federal TV channels, unlike, you

know, those kinds of made-up

terrorist attacks about which the FSB tells us that

they prevented 47 attacks that

terrorists were supposedly going to carry out. Here

there was a very real attempt at a

large-scale terrorist attack. Let’s

briefly watch this video—many of you have probably

seen it. It looks a little

ridiculous, yes, because of this terrorist’s mental

limitations, but let’s watch it and

then discuss all of it.

Fortunately, when he threw it,

the Molotov cocktail

only singed things slightly. There were no

casualties. But let’s get to the essence of what

happened: a certain Denis Murashov

prepared two barrels of gasoline, two

gas cylinders, firewood, and specifically bought

a UAZ vehicle in another city, loaded all of it

onto the vehicle, secured it, and drove in.

rammed into the entrance of the movie theater

Kosmos

after which he set it on fire. He failed, but what else would you call it then?

What is a terrorist attack, if not this?

This was a very real deliberate attempt

to carry out a very large-scale terrorist attack. I probably

am from Yekaterinburg

and people from Yekaterinburg probably understand better

the true scale of this attempted

terrorist attack, because those who have never been

to Yekaterinburg can hardly imagine

what the Kosmos movie theater is. It may seem to us

like this happened at some small

movie theater somewhere, but in fact it is

one of the city's main landmarks. It is

before the demolition, like the Rossiya Concert Hall

near the Kremlin, perhaps—that would be a fitting

comparison. In other words, this is

the largest cinema and concert venue in the city

of Yekaterinburg. It has more than 2,000

seats, a large building where there are often

hundreds or even thousands of people, and he

was planning not just to burn it down

but to burn it in such a way that it would go up

very quickly and very dramatically. This was a genuine

terrorist attack, and if we look at

this man's motives, we can very clearly

see that he is simply a man

who has gone off the rails because of religious delusions, and

the final push toward active

steps—the ones he ended up taking—

that is, specifically

the main motive for committing this attack was

this hysteria over *Matilda*, and

a video of this man was found fairly quickly

who attempted to carry out

the attack, in which he speaks at one of the

rallies against the film *Matilda*.

Let's listen to a short clip.

Dionisy... [inaudible/transcription unclear]

I came here from

the Oryol region, and in our time

I read information on the internet that soon there would be

a protest against this

*Matilda* and against the screening of this filthy

film, so I made the effort to come here.

I am very glad that here

there are like-minded people, fellow monarchists,

gathered here. Of course, I would have liked

there to be more, but at least

there are as many as there are, you understand. Like-minded people,

monarchists load a car with gasoline and

drive it into a building in the city center,

and for some reason the Investigative Committee

considers this intentional damage to

property. And I believe—my position as

a person and as a presidential candidate—is

once again that this was

an attempted terrorist attack, and those guilty bear

the main responsibility for this attempted

attack—a truly large-scale one. If

this madman had succeeded in doing

what he wanted, then it would have been

comparable—especially if he had done it during the day—

though fortunately, after getting drunk, he decided

to do it at night. It could have been comparable

to Beslan (the 2004 school siege in Russia), Nord-Ost (the 2002 Moscow theater hostage crisis), and other

terrible tragedies. The main

people responsible, of course, are

the instigators, and first and foremost our

wonderful Natalia Poklonskaya,

who has done a great deal over the past days

and months to stir up all these

lunatics, organize them, and give them

the sense that their activities

are being encouraged by the state. That is the most

important thing. Of course, people

with religious views—Poklonskaya herself

or anyone else—have the right to hold

a conservative point of view. They can

speak out on any issue. They can

certainly picket every

movie theater showing *Matilda* and write

anonymous letters against it—that is

their right. But Poklonskaya, being

a state official, and given

her particular recent history, is doing this

precisely on behalf of some, at least

part of the state and the bureaucracy.

That is how it looks, and in essence that is what it is.

Therefore, I absolutely believe that

what she is doing is very

harmful. These are things that are easy to start,

but much harder to stop, because

there may be many more people like this Denis Murashov

tomorrow. When

they are just madmen quietly

sitting in their apartments, that is one thing. But when

they understand that their activities

are being encouraged, their crazy idea that

'let's set a movie theater on fire'

is, in a certain sense, being given cover and legitimacy

by the state and by people like Poklonskaya. These are

monstrous things—crimes against

the country's future. I propose that we conduct

a poll.

We can run this poll on

YouTube and VKontakte: do you think that

Natalia Poklonskaya, as the author of all this

hysteria over *Matilda*, which

in fact arose exclusively

because of her—that is, solely

because of Poklonskaya we have been endlessly

discussing this topic, including on this

program—

is she the instigator of this

failed terrorist attack in the city of

Yekaterinburg?

Please answer on VKontakte, on

Twitter, and here on Facebook. I am very

interested in your opinion on this.

For now, let me see what people are writing about this

topic. And here is a response about textbooks:

Valery Shag-Sumenko writes: 'My wife works as a teacher

at a school in the Moscow region where

textbooks are handed out, but they are already

falling apart from age, not to mention

that they are all covered with notes from previous students.'

owners, and many people buy because of that

but what’s truly astonishing is

Moscow’s budget is 2 trillion rubles (about $21 billion), and in

Moscow, we still can’t afford to buy

to give children proper new

textbooks every year. It’s just, of course, astonishing

things. And every time, the eternal question for us is

where all these people are putting the money

because it seems like there’s so much money that

it should be impossible to somehow, well, spend it all

or even steal it all, lose it all

or squander it so completely that it becomes impossible

to buy textbooks, which on the scale of

all these expenditures, on the scale of park

renovations that consume tens of

billions of rubles, are really

a fairly small, very small amount. So

what else are people writing to us? Let me just

come over here, I’ll try right on YouTube

to look at the comments—at the speed

they’re flying by, I can’t even keep up with reading them

unfortunately. Batut, I really like

what you’re writing. Keep writing. It would also be good if you

left more likes, then Twitter

or maybe Oksana will help me and

send over more of what people are writing to us about

Poklonskaya

Poklonskaya has a right to her own opinion

once again, of course Poklonskaya has the right

to her own opinion, absolutely. But if there’s one thing

I strongly doubt

it’s that she really is such a deeply

religious person. Fine, let her

talk about it

let her talk about it, let her be

one of the leaders of these people. But she

is a particular kind of state

official, and she is waging a very real

war

using, among other things, administrative

resources. These rallies

are granted whatever permits they want very quickly

while rallies by the opposite

side are denied permits, and so on

and so on. That is, she is precisely the one creating

state protection for all of this. That’s

what I was talking about already. Nash Myach writes—no, Igor

Zhuravlyov writes: “Possessed by demons, she’s gathered all the lunatics

under her banners.” Well, those

people who commit arson are, without question,

mentally unstable, and I can only say once again

what I’ve said before: I do not think that

this has anything at all to do with Christianity

and this kind of madness is, in essence,

paganism—people obsessed with some

material objects, some symbols

that can be held in one’s hands. They

have made it so. Yes, of course, Nicholas II

was canonized by the Russian Orthodox

Church, but are they seriously trying to

convince us that he was the best

person in the world, a man

who was one of those responsible for

Russia being dragged into war, who

had defenseless workers shot, who

committed many crimes against

Russia—and now, so, they carry his

icons as if he were simply

the greatest person in Russian history

I believe she is unfit, and she has no place

in power. How can she be in power with her

instability? After all, she is still in

the State Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament), in fact

though actually Poklonskaya is not in the State

Duma—she is part of the executive branch

of government. That’s really how it works. And on

municipal elections—I’ll say, I’ll say

I will definitely talk about municipal elections

I will

but before that I have other topics

that I consider no less—and perhaps even

more—important. Before I move on

to our wonderful Ramzan

Kadyrov

and his rally, I want to mention

some good news: we have finally

what a joy it is for me to say this—

launched a store

for merch, as it’s called these days. At

the address you see here

there is finally our

fundraising store, where we sell

souvenirs. This kind of mug, by the way,

you could kill someone with it, you know, will also be

sold in this store soon. There are

several different kinds of items, and there will be

more and more. You won’t believe what we

had to go through in order to

launch this store, because

everyone refused to work with us

they would agree at first and then back out

from delivery providers to

sorting services, to the people and

organizations that handle payment processing

for money. We essentially had to build

everything from scratch. Basically, if you want

to open an online store for something tomorrow

you’ll most likely use ready-made solutions

there are e-commerce services available

but unfortunately all of that turned out to be

unavailable to us. So we simply did everything from

start to finish ourselves, and we’re very proud of that. We’ll

hope that you will buy

various

items in this store. It’s a

fundraising store: everything you buy, every

kopeck will go to our election

campaign—well, minus the production cost of the goods

By the way, we arranged things so that all

the merchandise is made in Russia. To be honest,

I was in the minority when we

argued about it. I said, no, it’s not that big

of a problem if we

order something from China, like all

online stores do. But our team

really stood firm on this first and foremost

to the bitter end. Yegor said that ours would be

Russian-made, and of very high quality

High quality, so please stop by.

And buy.

the rally in Russia, and in Grozny, Muslims

Myanmar and all the other things—what does all of this

mean? I’ve received a great many

questions on this topic. The first thing I

wanted to say is that, of course, the rally in

Moscow

certainly—the Moscow authorities, the Moscow

police, the Kremlin, whoever—they could have

dispersed it quite easily. There is no

doubt about that. I disagree with

those who write that they came out and

everyone got scared of them. No one there was

particularly scared. There was every possibility of dispersing them.

The other issue is

what the consequences of that would be—they are fairly

unpredictable, because the Russian

government is, unfortunately, deliberately pursuing

a policy of radicalizing Russian

Islam, and this policy is absolutely

criminal. It runs counter to the traditions of

our country. We have quite a large Muslim

population; first and foremost, they live in

the Volga region.

Look at Tatarstan, look at Bashkortostan.

We have not had any

significant conflicts on religious grounds.

Even there, during the somewhat difficult perestroika

and post-perestroika years,

the problem of radical Islamism there, and

of religious radicals there, at least

did not become especially acute. And this was

excellent. But then our wonderful Kremlin

decided that, in order to solve

certain problems, in order to

show

that Russia is a leader of some kind of

aggressive segment of Islamic

figures, it decided to put forward

Ramzan Kadyrov—or perhaps it was some kind of

mutual decision of theirs—that he should

become one of these leaders

of the Islamic world. And it seems to me that this is, first and foremost,

a crime against

Russian Muslims. Let’s take a look.

There are two short clips of what

happened at the rally in Grozny. In the first one,

first, let’s listen to the minister for

nationalities affairs, I think in Chechnya, and what

he said at this rally.

[applause]

[music]

What is this—Russia in 2017? Is this supposed to be

a normal secular state, or is it

some kind of

hellish jamahiriya (a state ruled in the style of Gaddafi’s Libya), impossible to understand where

this even is—some kind of Middle Ages?

Some kind of army of warriors who from here

will go and seize something, who love death more

than the infidels do—this is barbaric. And the result

of this is that we are stirring up

the Muslims of Russia, first and foremost the residents

of Chechnya, because all the rest of the broader

public looks at this and thinks, my God,

what on earth is going on there?

Some incomprehensible people—either armed

formations or maybe officials, or maybe not

officials; maybe these people were herded into

the rally, maybe they were forced there—but everyone

is shouting about some suicide fighters who

value death more than anything, and this

is being applauded. All of this sounds absolutely

insane. The persecution of Muslims in

Myanmar, of course, does exist, and it is good that

people suddenly remembered it. But only

the Russian officialdom, excuse me, has no right to speak about it.

Russian officialdom

And Ramzan Kadyrov likewise does not

have much standing to say much here, because

the genocide of these Rohingya has been going on

for a long time, and in 2012 they were being slaughtered, and

everyone was silent, and the Russian Federation—well,

a lot has been said about this, and I have written about it—

Russia consistently blocked all

UN Security Council resolutions

that would have concerned aid and support for

the Muslims of Myanmar.

So if you are going to hold any

rallies, then there is no need to shout that we

will line up from here all the way to the capital of the Rohingya region,

and that there will be some suicide fighters killing someone.

No—the rally should be held

against

the hypocritical policy of the leaders, against

the Kremlin, which has been blocking this for

ten years. For ten years they blocked

UN Security Council resolutions.

Absolutely. And

it is simply disgusting to watch the statements

of Kadyrov and everyone else, and of our

officials, who say: why is it that

the West is silent? Look, Muslims are being

slaughtered, and they are silent. But how are they

silent? It was on magazine covers, there were

photographs of it. Where do you think

everyone got all this from? How does everyone know? Because

the Western media talk about it, they talk about

the slaughter of Muslims in Myanmar.

Western politicians are outraged by it; they bring

it onto the agenda of the UN Security Council.

All of this was blocked by Russia, and then

suddenly—look at this—an army of some kind of

suicide fighters that we are supposedly going to send. I

know very well that in Chechnya and in the North

Caucasus in general, Russian Muslims are

normal people. They are not planning to fight

anyone; they want to live a normal

life. And the fact that we are now portraying

our Muslims this way—this was not just some

marginal rally. This was a rally to which

half the population

of Grozny was driven out. They claimed that a million

people came, though it was far fewer than that.

But in any case, it was a large

number of people. And simply to present us

as some kind of lunatics who

tomorrow will start fighting, or tomorrow...

will start carrying out terrorist attacks, because

let’s be honest with ourselves, because

a significant portion of the general public

when it hears all these

statements — “we will create an army of people

who love death more than

life, and who are ready to give up their lives”

— they understand what that means, and they think,

well, obviously, tomorrow you’ll be suicide bombers,

you’ll strap on martyr belts and go blow someone up.

If they failed to gain influence there, then

they went off to fight somewhere closer to home,

blew something up somewhere in their own

Chechnya

blew something up in Stavropol, came to

Moscow and blew something up here. People

think exactly like that. So why is this necessary?

Why do this?

Who needs these hysterical rallies? Well,

make some calls and write a petition to

the Kremlin — let the Kremlin change its position

at the Security Council. And one more small

example of how Ramzan

Kadyrov was introduced at this rally:

“Our vanguard has graced us today with his

presence… it is too early to serve him…”

“the defender of Islam and Muslims.”

[applause]

What does that look like? What we just heard

was the introduction of the head of a federal subject

of the Russian Federation, by the way. It sounded

like: “Behold, the legendary…”

“shahid (martyr) who illuminated us with his presence.”

That’s what it all sounded like. But

why not simply say: the governor

of the Chechen Republic,

the head of the Chechen Republic? All of this looks

completely wild, once again: people in some kind of military

or paramilitary uniform,

just shouting something, falling into

religious ecstasy — and they fall into

religious ecstasy not because there is

a real reason for it, but because they are

simply pursuing some political

objective of their own. If Kadyrov wanted to defend

Muslims in Myanmar,

he would have done so in 2012, in 2013,

in 2014, when there was

a resolution

at the Security Council that

Russia blocked. Back then he would have posted

something on his Instagram, but he did not

do that. And now he does. Why? Because

well, perhaps Saudi

Arabia is asking for it, or he wants

to distract attention from something, or

something else is going on. But in any case, we

understand that this is political

manipulation, and its basis is

religious extremism.

The main victims of this will be

Chechens, because attitudes toward them will

develop in a certain way — people

are simply afraid of all this. Within Chechen

society itself, once again we see how

moderate representatives of the ummah (Muslim community)

keep losing out to these ultra-

radical-minded fanatics who

want to go fight someone and wage war

somewhere.

This, in principle, causes great harm

to Russia’s Muslim community, which,

I repeat, has generally always been moderate,

and we have not had major

problems with that. At one time, the Americans

made

a monstrous mistake, one that they themselves suffered from later.

When the Soviet Union entered

Afghanistan, as a countermeasure they

began arming these radical

Islamist groups, and they didn’t just try —

they actually

implemented this concept: namely, that they

would arm, finance, and

support crazed religious

fanatics in order to defeat

the Soviet Union. In a certain sense, it

worked — when Osama bin Laden was

the United States’ best friend, it worked. But they

didn’t disappear afterward.

Later, these people blew things up,

flew planes into the towers in Manhattan, and these

people are still carrying out terrorist attacks

all over the world. And that is exactly how it works: you

cannot spend several years first

whipping these people up, introducing

some kind of propaganda of an openly

Islamist, essentially Wahhabi nature,

in mosques, schools, and everywhere else,

holding these insane rallies — and then

naturally, some number of people

will resonate with all of it,

will decide that they really do need

to die in such a “heroic” way,

blowing someone up somewhere, in Myanmar

or somewhere else. But they won’t just vanish.

No, they won’t go anywhere. They

will remain with us for many years, and

therefore we will be dealing with this, we will

have the FSB (Russia’s security service) hunting them down, we

will be trying to solve this somehow, trying

to rehabilitate them, and we will again, as

is happening across Russia right now,

be distinguishing good mosques from bad

mosques, radical mosques from moderate

mosques, because we ourselves created all this.

Because Kadyrov was allowed to do all this,

because the Kremlin, for the sake of

solving some of its own foreign-policy

or domestic political issues, apparently decided:

“Let there be a core of support

for radical Islam here in Russia.” We do not

need that. It is absolutely disgusting. Yes, I

suggest we look at how the poll

about Poklonskaya ended and

launch our new poll.

And the question will be as follows: do you think

that Ramzan Kadyrov

harmful to Russia’s Muslims. I really

do think that this kind of showy

demonstrative rallies, where people are herded

into attending, these endless, highly aggressive and

provocative statements, these games with

terminology, which need to be handled

with extreme caution, about people who love

death — all of this harms Muslims

in Russia. In the end, it still

creates problems in Chechnya.

It breeds poverty, it breeds

violence, it breeds lawlessness, and in all

the other Muslim regions, in

regions where the majority of people

follow this religion. So

please — we no longer have the poll on

YouTube, but voting is underway on

Twitter and voting is underway on VKontakte.

Is Kadyrov, through his actions,

harming Muslims

in Russia? They write that our merch store

went down, but then came back up. Well,

good for our people, our

guys who handle support for

this store. Alex Stafford writes:

“Muslims are allowed to do it, but others aren’t?”

They get thrown straight into police vans.

Double standards and hypocrisy — many people

have said that, and indeed,

there are double standards and hypocrisy. But let’s

be honest, guys: are we really going to demand

that Muslims should also be thrown into police vans?

They absolutely have every right to hold these

rallies. Honestly, I’ll tell you: if they had started

throwing them into police vans there, and one of

them later came to me and

said, “Listen, Navalny, you’re for freedom

of rallies and assemblies,”

and asked me, consistently, to file a complaint for them with

the European Court of Human Rights, I would

write a complaint for them to the European

Court, because Muslims

in Russia have the right to stand in front of the Burmese embassy

and shout whatever they want there. But walking around there with pistols

is not necessary. When governors

organize things this way, that’s not acceptable.

Double standards — when they detain me in

the entryway of my building,

but they’re allowed to do it — that’s not right either, of course.

But of course people have the right and good reason

to be outraged: these

Muslims really are being killed, and it’s logical that they are outraged.

It’s right for them to be outraged; it’s just that

everyone should have the opportunity to express

that outrage. Yevgeny Dalny Ilchenko

writes to me that any religion is radical —

it’s only a matter of time before people start

killing.

People believe in God, the most important being

in the world, in their view.

There is no proof — conflict

is guaranteed. Yevgeny, I categorically do not

agree with you. But I, too, am

a believer — and I’m not killing anyone, so

these kinds of generalizations are

wrong.

Most people on planet Earth

are believers, they follow one

religion or another, but they have not killed anyone, do not

kill anyone, and do not plan to kill anyone. It is

always a very aggressive minority.

Of course, conflicts on religious

grounds, massacres on

that basis, have accompanied the whole of

human history. But in general, you and I

and humanity’s minds have come a sufficiently

long way that now, in the 21st

century, at least in civilized and

developed countries, religion and religious

questions should not be a cause of violence, should not be

a cause of calls for violence. But these

guys are exactly the ones dragging us back.

That’s what I’m discussing, basically —

why they are pulling us back into

the 17th century. We do not want to

be there. And any of the most difficult

and delicate questions connected with religion,

with Islam, with Buddhism, with anyone at all,

can be discussed without people in military

uniforms shouting that now an army

of martyrs is going to march somewhere. That is not needed.

It is unnecessary, harmful, and dangerous.

All right then, please tell me what

we have on Poklonskaya — ah, I see the question.

So: is Poklonskaya to blame, or

was Poklonskaya

one of the people who inspired

the terrorist attack in Yekaterinburg? On YouTube, 96

percent said yes, 3 percent said no. On VKontakte,

92 percent said yes, 7 percent said no. On

Twitter, 92 percent said yes, 8 percent said no.

There are decimals here; I’m just rounding. We

can see that this time the audience

on YouTube turned out to be the most

intolerant toward Poklonskaya in this respect. 92, 96 percent —

it’s all roughly the same. Thanks to everyone

who voted.

This is important. I would like more

people in Russia to think about these

causes of religious extremism.

As we can see both in the case

of Poklonskaya and in the case of Kadyrov with his

rally, it simply appears out of thin

air as a result of political

manipulation. Yesterday no one even knew there was a problem, but then

someone suddenly decided to hold these rallies, and

some kind of armies of shahids (martyrs) start lining up.

Poklonskaya

Yesterday she was working in the prosecutor’s office

of Ukraine and trying to bring

pro-Russian activists to justice,

and now, apparently, she has become the chief

leader

of Orthodox fundamentalists in our

country. And these people call for

violence, encourage violence. This will not

pass without consequences; one way or another, they

will stir up some people who have no

completely in their right mind to the point of

running around stabbing people with knives

or setting movie theaters on fire

The September 10 elections — we’ve finally gotten to them.

There are a lot of questions about them, but before that I

want to answer a question about the contests.

You remember that I announced a contest for

YouTube channels. I was asked a lot

of questions about it. I announced

a fairly large prize there — 1 million rubles (about one million Russian rubles).

It will be distributed among those

channels that manage to keep going,

continue publishing, and win our

contest. And after that I didn’t write anything about it

or say anything, and many people

were, generally speaking, upset and said,

that Navalny announced a contest and wasn’t doing anything

as part of it. I

deliberately didn’t do anything, because, you see,

it’s a fairly large sum of money — 1 million

rubles — and we’ll raise it together. I want

it to go to people who make

solid, stable

YouTube channels. And those who made it to

this stage of the contest, didn’t quit, and kept

putting out videos in accordance with

the contest rules — they will continue to be

considered. Because I didn’t want

you know, for someone to decide to do it

for a month, then I notice them, I write about them,

I sum things up, and then they receive

some fairly large cash

prize, and then they lose interest and abandon the channel.

After all, our task

is not just to hand out money. Our task

is to make sure these channels

keep publishing regularly even after

the contest ends — for months and years afterward.

So I quite deliberately

said nothing about it over the summer.

I wanted to see who would have the energy

to keep doing all this. The September 10 elections —

they will take place

in many regions of the country. Most

of the questions are about the Moscow elections.

People write: why are you ignoring them?

Will you say something? It’s important.

Of course it’s important. But I want to say that

I’m not ignoring them at all. I can say quite

frankly that I have absolutely no

enthusiasm whatsoever about the list from

Yabloko (a Russian liberal political party), or about Gudkov’s list.

Simply because I am engaged in

practical politics. I am a candidate for

president, I’m running now, and I want

a lot of people to support me. And if people —

they may be wonderful people —

but they do not support me in these

elections, and instead support Yavlinsky,

then by running in the elections they are signing

commitments there — all their, well,

their main political

actions

must be aligned with the Yabloko party, to support

its candidates, and refrain from criticizing

Yabloko.

Well, that means that in effect this

setup was created to support

Grigory Yavlinsky.

He is a very good person, but I

believe that as a candidate in the presidential

election he is not a very successful choice. I am calling

on people to vote for me, so naturally I support

those candidates who

support me in return. That is

a normal, pragmatic approach. And that’s

the first point. Second, I think that of course we need

first and foremost to support those teams

that approach the Moscow elections politically,

not just with the attitude that we’ll get elected,

become deputies, and then somehow

represent Muscovites’ interests — praising

the Moscow authorities in some places, criticizing

them in others. That is not enough.

There are people who say directly:

we have formed a team, and we are running in order

to take power in this specific

municipality and raise issues

politically. We are fighting United Russia (the ruling political party), we

will adopt political statements,

we will work in the interests of Muscovites,

that is why we are running. But we are not going

to stay silent about everything else, and we will

fight the current Moscow authorities,

who are corrupt and harmful to Muscovites. And

we help such teams. That is Yashin’s team, first of all,

in the Krasnoselsky District.

We’re sending mailings to volunteers, and I

recorded a video — it will come out tomorrow — about the case of the

Krasnoselsky District.

There is Konstantin Yankauskas’s team, and Maxim

Motin in Pechatniki is running from the Communists, by the way.

So in the Moscow elections

on September 10, of course I urge everyone

to come vote.

At the very least because the position of the Moscow

mayor’s office, and its strategy,

is aimed at making sure that nobody

shows up to the elections. And right now there are quite a lot of

publications

that argue convincingly

that this is a

deliberate policy being carried out by

Anastasia Rakova. Anastasia Rakova is a

deputy to Sobyanin (Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin).

She is the main person in charge of all political

issues. They call it “drying out turnout.”

The idea is very simple: let’s make sure that in the election nobody

comes, and turnout is only around 7, 10, or 12

percent.

Then they bring in some of their own

not even state employees, so to speak, but

workers from municipal and city

enterprises, who vote simply according to

a list. And that way all the mayor’s office

candidates win on the basis of this low turnout. And

therefore, even if you don’t particularly like

the choices, even if some of the candidates don’t appeal to you

You may not like it very much, but don't you see...

your own candidates, then at least by voting negatively, in order

to undermine the political

strategy of United Russia and Putin's

Sobyanin's Moscow City Hall. In these

elections, you need to come and vote. Please

pay attention to several lists — there are many

different ones: Yabloko, PARNAS,

there is a Communist list, as I already said.

Putin in Pechatniki, as I understand it,

is mainly running from the Communists. There is

also, accordingly, the Butkovsky list.

Look through all of them — you can choose

someone. I know all about your skepticism.

I fully understand that now everyone will

write to me saying that no one has any real powers, and so

on. Well, why weren't we very actively

involved in all this? Because we

conducted a survey and monitoring and saw that

within the Party of Progress, within our

activist base, there was practically no one willing

to take part in these elections.

Simply because there is almost nothing to do there,

there are almost no powers — I know all that. But even so,

if you are still

considering this question, then whether

to go there or not — of course

you should go in Moscow. In other regions,

you need to act according to the situation. But

for example, in Yekaterinburg, which I

already mentioned, the situation is exactly the opposite.

No matter what anyone says, the authorities very

much want high turnout. Just look

at this, please — an astonishing, absolutely

remarkable announcement that is now

posted all over Sverdlovsk Region.

Before, they used to raffle off

some small trinket right at the polling station,

hand out free buns or something

like that. Now it's 15 apartments and 130 cars.

So these are already major, substantial prizes.

Tens of millions, even around a hundred million

rubles are being spent to boost turnout

in Sverdlovsk Region, and we understand

why. Because

both the Sverdlovsk regional authorities and the Kremlin

— this was unquestionably their decision —

did not allow Yevgeny Roizman

the main candidate, onto the ballot, and there are not many people willing

to go to these elections.

So because not many want to go, they are

now heating things up with apartments

— which is simply a blatant

violation of election

law. Our wonderful Panfilova

acts as if nothing is happening.

She gave a mild scolding, and the Sverdlovsk election commission

said, "But how can that be? A lottery at

polling stations is prohibited by law." To which they replied,

"Well, this isn't us — these are

our local businesspeople holding such a lottery in order

to increase turnout." Lies and deception,

hypocrisy as usual — but for the Central

Election Commission, that is apparently good enough.

Just as, by the way, it is funny that

today CEC head Panfilova said, "Oh,

you know, the Moscow authorities disrupted

voter information about the elections." Just think:

there are only four days left until the election, and she has only

just now noticed it. People have been writing about this for

two months already. Look, there is great

statistics now posted all over the internet:

they simply counted how often

various media outlets wrote at all about

the municipal elections in Moscow. So,

the official publications of Moscow City Hall,

the newspapers it owns, either did not write about them

or wrote about them dozens of times less than

any publications not owned by the mayor's office.

Panfilova didn't notice that,

but now she says, somehow,

that the election commission failed. But then why

did you leave in place the head of the election commission,

Mr. Valentin Gorbunov, with whom

we have long been fighting, whom for a long time

dozens, hundreds, thousands of people have not merely

accused of organizing election fraud,

but over many years have provided

repeated evidence that he

rigged these elections? Nevertheless,

Panfilova allowed all this, and now she

is simply pretending to be clueless, as usual.

So, in Sverdlovsk Region,

the strategy has to be different. People very—

not people — the authorities very much want you

to come to the polling stations there,

and there you should not go. The time for simple strategies,

my friends, has passed. I cannot once again

come up with some slogan like, "I vote for

any party against United Russia"

or "for any party against United Russia."

Slip of the tongue — I said "for United Russia." I

just have everyone sitting in front of me here, not behind

computers. The moment I said "for United

Russia," everyone immediately raised

their heads and looked at me with wild

eyes, and I realized I had misspoken. So,

the time of old slogans and simplistic

strategies is over. You can't just invent something

easy anymore — the Kremlin has already

accounted for all of that. So the strategies

have to be smart. Guys, you yourselves must

decide what to do: in some places you go to

the elections, in some places you do not.

That is the only way this works, and no other

way. So specifically, once again, in

Moscow, since there are the most

questions about Moscow: go and look at

the PARNAS and Yabloko lists, Yabloko, Gudkov,

the Communists — choose those people and

vote for them if you want to go

to the Moscow elections. Alexei, will you say

something about the trials of Ulyukayev and Belykh?

Well, about Ulyukayev's trial, I want to say first

of all:

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you have, of course, read all these

wonderful stories about sausages and everything else.

And the rest — all those things that have become

memes.

Jackets, and so on and so forth. But

the main thing we can see from all these

wiretaps of Sechin and Ulyukaev is not even

proof that Ulyukaev definitely

did take the money, or that Ulyukaev definitely did not, but rather

that these were ordinary, everyday

conversations: someone has a little basket, well,

take the suitcase, carry it to

the trunk of the car. No one was

shocked — not Ulyukaev, not his aide, not the driver

when they brought Ulyukaev a case

that, as the driver said, weighed 20

kilograms (44 lbs), and he carried that case away, and they said,

“And here’s the key,” as Sechin told Ulyukaev.

You might say, fine — why? Because

handing over suitcases full of cash is

an everyday

accepted Kremlin practice. VTB does it,

Rosselkhozbank does it,

banks do it, Rosneft does it, any

state corporation does it, ministries do it. That is how

Putin’s Russia is built, that is how

Putin’s system of power is built.

There is an enormous cash turnover. This is how

bonuses are paid, so-called thirteenth salaries,

this is how officials are paid extra, this is how the security services are paid extra,

generals, colonels, and everyone else

are given cash top-ups so that they

stay on the hook, so that they become part

of this corrupt system, so that they

defend it, so that they feel themselves and

understand themselves to be members of the mafia. Maybe

some of you remember — there was once an

long ago

article in *The New Times* magazine

called “The Kremlin’s Black Cashbox.” It was written by journalist

Natalia Morari.

And then she was expelled from Russia because

she had Moldovan citizenship — precisely because of

that article. Many, many years ago, she

described quite well how this

system works, with references to specific people. We

even know who those people are, despite the fact that

the article described how it

is done — that, quite literally,

uniformed officers are assigned to it, and

this whole chain works by stuffing money

into a gym bag. One such bag can easily hold

a sum in rubles equivalent to

around one million dollars.

For convenience, 5,000-ruble notes are used.

All of this is not

an exaggeration, but a description of an entirely

specific practice. And Ulyukaev did this

many times. He was not necessarily taking that money for himself;

he goes, and Sechin tells him,

“Listen, Alexei, here’s a Rosneft

bonus for all your staff. Here,”

he carries that million away, then his

deputies come, and he gives each of them

bundles of cash, and they all disperse. This

happens everywhere, with all

high-ranking officials.

Constantly. Sechin gave a suitcase to

Ulyukaev; yesterday he gave a suitcase to

Shuvalov; the day after tomorrow he’ll give one

to someone else. And then there are

the Kremlin’s sham election candidates,

presidential ones in particular. And if

someone like Boris Yakemenko, who announced today,

is told, “Well, go see so-and-so,”

they’ll prepare him a little basket with sausage,

and they’ll bring him out a suitcase full of money too.

“Here, this is for your election campaign.” This

is exactly how everything happens, exactly how everything

is financed, and unfortunately there is no other way it works.

That’s why, in

the case with Ulyukaev, there was this total break in expectations:

like, “Wait, what for?

We do this all the time. Igor

Ivanovich has, well, been handing these out, and I

took the suitcase from him because

I understood I was supposed to take it, because

there was an instruction, because there was

authorization — and suddenly it turned out to be such a

setup, from him himself.” That’s how it all

works. Meanwhile, as a teacher from

Moscow writes to us, children are receiving

old textbooks and passing them around among themselves.

Let’s move on. Alexei, what will you

do about Ramzan when you become president?

Evgeny, I’ve answered this question many times.

A president should not do nothing

about Ramzan. First of all, as

president, I would appeal to the Investigative

Committee and the Prosecutor’s Office, demanding

that Kadyrov’s involvement

be investigated

in the murder of Boris Nemtsov. Personally, I believe

there is a sufficient number of facts

directly indicating that Kadyrov

was the main organizer

and mastermind behind Nemtsov’s killing, and this matter

must be examined first and foremost.

And

that is where I would begin; that is where one must

begin. And nothing terrible will happen in Chechnya

if tomorrow Kadyrov is

under investigation, in detention, or on the

defendant’s bench. Nothing will happen there. But

do you seriously think that

all Chechens would suddenly go to war

against everyone tomorrow, or

stop living and working normally

simply because Kadyrov was taken

somewhere, brought to Moscow, and put in Lefortovo (a Moscow detention prison)? Well,

of course not. That will not happen, just as

nothing happened in Makhachkala

when the mayor of Makhachkala

Amirov was arrested — he too was considered untouchable,

absolutely untouchable.

So, the poll results about Kadyrov and

Muslims — I can see them on YouTube.

Ninety-two percent of those who voted

believe that Kadyrov harms Russia’s Muslims;

seven percent say he does not.

VKontakte

90 percent believe that Kadyrov is harming

Russia’s Muslims; 10 percent

hold the opposite view. On

Twitter, it’s almost the same

91 percent versus 10—well, 9, that is,

I mean, at least you, my

viewers, clearly said that you

hold roughly the same

opinion: that Kadyrov is harming المسلمين of Russia

Russia, but it seems to me that this is fairly

obvious. It seems to me that all these

video recordings

look frighteningly insane from

Moscow

but just imagine how they look—one could even

say it’s offensive—for people

who live in Chechnya; they look at all this

and think, “Good Lord, what does he take us

for?” That’s very important. Also, on another

topic, Pyotr asks me about

wearing a T-shirt with the Navalny logo

and whether you can be charged with illegal campaigning

There was one funny case, actually,

when a report was drawn up against someone, and in it

it said that he was displaying

symbols to the people around him

by putting on a white T-shirt. But that case, as I understand it,

came to nothing. You cannot be held

administratively liable, so feel free

to buy such T-shirts for yourself or

for some other

of our volunteers. Supporter Mr. Tally

92 asks me: “Alexei, what do you

think about Sobchak

possibly taking part in the presidential election?”

I don’t think anything about it. I think

it’s completely made up. Ksenia

Sobchak—I know her fairly well—she’s

a sensible woman. She really is

like anyone who works

in show business: she loves PR of some kind and

is probably not against stirring up some interest around

the idea that she will take part in

the presidential election. But it seems to me that

in the end it will amount to zero. But no, let’s hope she won’t

stoop so low as to

take part as an obvious spoiler in

the presidential campaign. But of course

the Kremlin wants to find some kind of

candidate like that, but I think they

will find someone of that type, something like

Tinkov (Oleg Tinkov, Russian businessman): an extravagant

person with completely

unacceptable, disgusting views

strange behavior and

some odd traits, but inclined toward

sharp, flashy statements—someone vivid who

will say astonishingly

offensive nonsense on the internet, and he

will be presented as, “Well, here is the

candidate of the liberals and democrats; here,

look, this is what

a liberal, a democrat, and the opposition in general look like in Russia,”

and “So, if you’re for the opposition, go ahead and vote

for some generalized Tinkov,”

who will behave in a completely

disgusting way—well, more or less like

he usually does. Most likely, if not that,

they’ll do something of that sort; they’ll be looking for

such a person. They need a Mikhail Prokhorov

number two

but this time even more flamboyant, because

this time there will be even more problems,

more problems with turnout. Vladislav Budai

asks whether there is any point in signing up as

a volunteer if there is no campaign office in your city

Of course there is, because you

even without one can easily order

stickers—we’ll send them to you—and put them up

where it matters most. But you can also campaign

just the same; you can wear this

T-shirt; you can do the most important

work—persuading the people around you. Besides,

despite the fact that in your city

there is no office, it is 100 percent certain that in your

city there are hundreds—or, if it’s a small town,

dozens—of people who have already

signed up as volunteers. We will introduce you to them,

connect you, and you’ll see that you

are by no means alone and can organize

excellent work even without any

office

So, people complain about the prices in the store, and

you complain about the prices in our merch store

Listen, guys, here’s the thing:

when this works on a commercial

basis, you order one T-shirt;

let’s say the cost price is, say,

300 rubles (about $3–4), then you sell it for 600

and make 300 rubles (about $3–4), which you put in your

pocket. But our task is to finance

the election campaign, so that’s why we

probably have a higher markup

but, as I already said, our costs

are much higher. We have Russian-made T-shirts,

and we had to build everything from scratch

because people refuse to work with us—

online stores are afraid. Yes, the prices

really are higher, but this is fundraising

through the store. Everything you pay will be

transferred to the election campaign. But

that’s how it works. I think quite a lot

will be said about the store; Volkov

will talk about it, and we’ll show you, so to speak, its

inner workings. By the way, that will probably be interesting to everyone

—whether it’s possible to create a store like this

that will sell

Russian-made products, and how many orders there will be at all

—all of that is terribly

interesting, and I’m terribly interested in it. I’ll probably

tell you more about it too. What else? An ardent

supporter writes: “In Mostovsky District

of Krasnodar Krai, all municipal employees, under

threat of dismissal, have been ordered by the head of the district

to campaign and provide lists of 10

people each who will definitely go and vote

for United Russia in the legislative assembly election.”

Classic. How else do you think they can do it?

They can only do it this way, only like this.

Employees of all state-run

public-sector institutions. But in Krasnodar Krai (a region in southern Russia),

it's complete lawlessness there—even private

companies can be forced to do this.

Give me a list of 10 people—and whose free will is that?

There is no other way, no other

way. Not only can they no longer

win elections, they can’t even get people to

show up to vote anymore. That is exactly why

our campaign has, broadly speaking, been so successful

despite the pressure on us, despite headquarters being shut down,

despite attempts to arrest people, despite efforts to stop us

from opening an online store, and because

people have simply had enough of all this. They

want politicians to emerge whom

they can support voluntarily.

That is exactly why we have 160,000

volunteers, and their number keeps growing.

And that is exactly why, friends,

I urge you: join

us, become part of our

team, take part in all of this here,

because it is impossible to watch how

the authorities, under threat of dismissal, simply

force people at least to come to

the polling stations. We’ll see. I

think that in these elections, in some

cities, turnout may already be even lower

than 10 percent. In the Beautiful Russia of the Future

(a political slogan meaning a better future Russia), everyone will go to

the polls—but not all of them; the majority will do so completely

voluntarily, because they will see

on the ballots those candidates

who represent their interests. On the 10th

of the month.

In some places, come; in others, don’t come. And

just as importantly, in Moscow I am especially

strongly urging those

who live in the Krasnoselsky District, in

Pechatniki, and in Zyuzino to come vote. See you

next week.

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