National Guard officers thrown out onto the street, Putin and import substitution, Volochkova versus pensioners

[music]

Good evening to everyone in Moscow, where

spring has finally arrived. It's 8 p.m., which

means that the live broadcast of the program

Russia of the Future is on the air, and I am Alexei Navalny

or an "aggressive liar," as Anatoly Chubais called me

this week. We'll talk a little

about this amazing, wonderful,

very honest man on our

program.

Right from the start, I want

to tell you two things. First: if you want me

to answer your questions, write to me on

Twitter with the hashtag #RussiaOfTheFuture, and

second: please subscribe to the channel

you're watching right now. We have

about 850,000 subscribers, and we'd really

like to reach one million as soon as possible.

I want to thank you, because the channel is

doing quite well.

Google provides this new metric:

the unique number of subscribers. That is,

it's not like you watched first on

your phone, then on your computer, then on

another computer, and it counted as three

different people. Using some clever

algorithm, they calculate unique

users, and last month we set

a new record: more than 4 million

unique users watched our

channel. A total of 16 million views in

a month. So that's great: 6,000

new subscribers, 17 videos made it into

YouTube's trending section, and several videos

got a million or close to a million views.

So thank you very much.

This strange YouTube television

is competing with real television,

so please subscribe. Once we

hit one million, we'll get the gold play button,

which I'll show you here, if

of course Lyubov Sobol, the producer of this

channel, even lets me hold it.

My Thursday tradition, which is tremendously enjoyable,

is introducing the people who

will be running in the September elections.

Why do I so enjoy talking

about these people and urging you

to follow them, even if you don't live in

Moscow? Well, because this is real

competition, real politics. We all miss

debates and some kind of competition.

It's clear that it still won't be

fair, but we will see real

live people fighting for the votes

of other live people. It will be very, very

curious, very interesting. Over the past

week,

two absolutely wonderful

people announced their candidacies. One is a very

close associate of mine, the director of our foundation, Ivan

Zhdanov. So yes, I am campaigning for Ivan Zhdanov.

He's running in

northern Moscow, in Sokol and Aeroport — good

districts, a good constituency. If you live there,

sign up as a volunteer. Let's watch

a few seconds of the video with which he

is launching his campaign. But I'm sure he will be

both an excellent candidate and

an excellent deputy if he gets support.

And Zhdanov — what does he look like? Northern Moscow:

Sokol, Aeroport, Voykovsky, Koptevo.

Good neighborhoods: historic, prosperous,

well maintained.

But even here, at every turn, residents

run into corruption and negligence

from officials. I am Ivan Zhdanov.

I am a lawyer and the director of the Anti-Corruption Foundation.

I am putting forward my candidacy

in the Moscow City Duma elections for the 8th

electoral district. I want you

to have an independent candidate.

I want us to drive United Russia members out of

the Moscow City Duma. I lived in this district for 10 years.

I know both the local problems and the citywide ones,

and I know how to solve them. All I need

is your support.

[music]

You saw his website — register there. I

noticed a very funny, and actually very

painful, reaction from various

United Russia people specifically to the phrase

Zhdanov used: "We will drive United

Russia out." Because politically, they are

ready to tolerate you saying, "There's corruption

everywhere,

I'll deal with housing and utilities problems, blah blah blah, we'll

work on major building repairs, blah blah blah."

But candidates who come in and say,

"Basically, my main issue is fighting

United Russia, I want to drive United Russia out,"

that they really do not like. And there

all sorts of Sobyanin loyalists (supporters of Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin)

have already worked themselves into not a mini-hysteria but a full-blown one,

which is very funny. They even stirred up a fuss

around another

candidate who announced his candidacy literally

yesterday. This is also someone very close to me,

a person whom I have known for many

years, and I took my first steps in politics

together with him back in the Yabloko party.

That is Ilya Yashin.

And of course he is running in his own district,

which includes Krasnoselsky District, where

he is the head of the municipal council. He won in

that municipality by simply crushing

United Russia — absolutely smashing United

Russia — and brought his team in there, which

is very important. By the way, there are several

districts in Moscow where, let's say,

non-United Russia candidates have won, but almost nowhere, unfortunately,

do they act as a united

team. Someone gets bought off, someone

gets manipulated, deceived, intimidated, and somehow

it ends up better in some places, worse in others.

But in Krasnoselsky District, things are really

going well, because Yashin and his team are advancing

a Moscow political agenda.

federal

and genuinely addresses local problems and

carry out the program. He said, I will give up

the official car, he refused

turned it into a social taxi, and so

on and so forth. And now, regarding Yashin

they really want to... well, first let's

for once, watch a short clip. I...

Yashin's nomination, and then we'll see how

city hall reacted to it. A map for

for the authorities to start working in

the interests of citizens, there must be

reasonable laws adopted

and parliamentary oversight must function, but

that is not happening because the Duma

today is controlled by the United

Russia party, and in order to change

the situation, I decided to take part in

the elections for deputies to the Moscow City Duma

which will take place on September 8. I hope

to become your representative in the city

parliament. I will defend your interests and

work to ensure that Moscow becomes

a city comfortable for the majority of its

residents. My electoral district is No. 45

It includes my Krasnoselsky District, as

well as Basmanny, Meshchansky, and Sokolniki

If you are registered in one of these

districts, you will be able to sign in support of me in

June and vote on September 8. Yashin

naturally is very strongly disliked by

United Russia, and is very strongly disliked by

Sobyanin. It's clear why: because he is

such a savvy guy

who knows how to use modern

methods of communication, despite censorship. Well,

like me, actually, and many others,

he records videos for his YouTube channel. He

has an excellent grasp of the local agenda, of

local problems, and you can no longer say to him

hey, you don't know how the pipes

work. He knows how the pipes work

because he's a municipal leader. You can't

say to him, well, you only understand

pipes, but you don't understand

politics, because he does understand

politics and has taken part in elections many times

You know him — he's quite a well-known

politician of essentially federal stature

they are fighting him with some kind of

team. So they recruited black PR operatives

asked for the very worst of the

black PR people, set them apart into a separate

group, and then the most cynical and

lying creeps, apparently, were selected into

a separate group and told: you will

handle Yashin, because

well, you saw it — the first salvo in the campaign against

him consisted of the fact that they, well,

literally — and this is not funny at all —

started tormenting his family, his elderly

grandmother, who has a serious illness

dementia, and she is in a medical

facility, and they are trying to

evict her. Then their journalists rush in

you rush in, then a police officer arrives

and brings journalists who film this

grandmother, or some person resembling

the grandmother, with stories that Yashin had

personally thrown her out of her home in order to

take the apartment. I mean, they are just brazenly

lying in a completely unimaginable

and inhuman way, and then they broadcast all of it

on federal television. But we

expected that they would stage something special

when he officially announced his candidacy. I

saw him on the eve of the announcement and said to Yashin

when you publish the video about your candidacy, what

do you think they will say about you? Well,

he thought, well, they will probably once again

exploit the theme of what a

terrible person I am and that I'm evicting my grandmother — they'll lie about

that again. But what happened was just

staggering — I couldn't even

[music]

at first I couldn't even understand why this

was happening. It was such a strange thing. Later we

thought: is there actually any

point to this at all? I mean, roughly speaking, what they

did was post it through all these

trash Telegram channels, Seti i Nezi and

all the rest. By the way, this again brings us to

the question of what they publish

— analytics? No, they do not publish any

analysis. They post ordinary paid-for

material — Kononenko and all the rest of

these human rejects published a video

where some person — supposedly, I'm sitting

in a car and filming on a phone, like

trees

It's just that the clip is long, three minutes, I won't

show it to you, but it goes like this:

they're filming trees, and then, oh, who's that

walking along the fence? Some people are walking

oh, they're kicking a cat there, and then

they dumped this clip, and all these

Kremlin lackeys

then supposedly identified the person kicking the cat as

Yashin and started pushing the line: Yashin beat up

a kitty. Let's take a look

at the video in which Yashin allegedly kicks a cat

they drive past

droid

I love the country too... our keys too... what is this,

film them, this is also... for the sake of this

time, that's it, I'm driving away

Well, it's obvious that this is not Yashin

Any person who has ever seen

Yashin understands perfectly well that

these are hired actors, and we can see that they are

hired actors because, basically speaking,

they are dressed exactly the same way Yashin

was dressed in the video he released

shortly before that. They simply picked

— you see, that's how he was dressed — they picked

someone generally similar, just a bit heavier

but overall of a similar type

Filipchuk will probably be outraged when he sees this

to watch this

but nevertheless, let's say, somewhat similar

so, well, they posted this thing with the cat

and I watched it, and apparently Bogomol sent it to me

what even is this, what is going on, and I said

but even if the guy works for

you, anyone who watches this

video understands that it isn't you, and I mean

understands a simple thing: Sobyanin's (Sergei Sobyanin, Moscow mayor) people

PR people are [__] and degenerates who got

some money, took the money, and made

a fake video, but so far on the internet

people will laugh at it, but who could have

guessed that they wouldn't just use

a corrupt Telegram channel—they would actually

show it on federal television

now I'll show you those 40 seconds

all of this was shown on a major over-the-air TV channel

I'll stay in the corner because otherwise

they'll hit us with a strike, so: a fake about

Yashin (Ilya Yashin, Russian opposition politician), but now on a major federal

I will use my experience so that

parliamentary oversight starts working in the city

and sensible laws are passed, and

in today's Facebook post

by the well-known Ilya Yashin, a Moscow

municipal deputy of so-called

opposition views

he delights his followers with important news

claiming that he is aiming to take part in the autumn

elections to the City Duma and has already begun

campaigning. Very interesting footage from

a certain Moscow resident who wanted to capture

a new construction site in the capital when suddenly

another cameraman appeared in the frame with

professional equipment, filming

let's say, a person resembling Mundi

who in turn suddenly kicked

an animal resembling a cat

incidentally, everything is phrased in such a way

that you can't sue over it, I mean

it's obviously slander, obviously a fake, and

speaking of journalists, people

working with all these channels

they all want to seem respectable, they

want to be like us, to sit with us at the same

table, and they get very offended when people don't

extend a hand to them, don't shake hands with them, but that's because

in reality they are just trash. This

person who made this report

or the one they wrote it for, who read it on air

well, what can you say about him? He

doesn't deserve to be called a human being at all

but returning to Yashin, it became clear

that the point is, well, just like in the

joke

the spoons disappeared from the house, everyone thought

the guest had stolen them

then the spoons were found, but the bad aftertaste remained

or like in another joke about how

either he beat someone up or he got beaten up, well

something like that happened. And here too

a certain context for discussion has been created, and now everyone

is discussing

not whether Yashin is running or not

not what he said about Sobyanin, what complaints he

raised, what his platform is. Even here I am

analyzing all of this, and all

together with you, but I'm discussing a cat, and we

of course understand everything, but some elderly woman

who watched all this on television

may later be told that it

was fake, but no—the impression remains: Yashin either

kicked some dog or maybe

pulled a cat by the tail, or maybe he

someone else did—anyway, there was some unpleasant

story involving Yashin and a cat that got beaten, and

that's basically what it's designed for. But I wouldn't

say this was some kind of super-mega

technology; it still seems to me that

this is just another embezzlement scheme

plain and simple, built around this kind of black

PR smear campaign, but nevertheless, of course

there is a certain logic to it, and in this

there is, well, basically, guys, exactly why

this is why we're launching Smart Voting

turnout will be low, yes, of course

some elderly women will come to vote

and they'll bring along elderly women who

have only seen this report about

how Yashin

had some business with a cat. But with turnout at 20 percent

if we go there, we can simply

the viewers of this program across Moscow, by showing up

there, and in Yashin's district, Smart Voting

means that we vote only

for one name only, always. We will choose him, we

we will be able to outvote all those

elderly voters and elect Yashin, and Zhdanov, and

Sobol, and Milov, and all the other

decent people. By the way, I

have gotten quite a lot of questions

about Smart Voting, and

the main one right now is this: since I

represent people from the FBK (Anti-Corruption Foundation), I'm told

well, what if in a district there is

an FBK candidate and another

opposition candidate with a higher rating?

The answer is: there are no such districts, actually

speaking of FBK, and if we're talking about

staff, Sobol is running and

Zhdanov is running; beyond that, no one else from the Anti-Corruption Foundation

is running in the election

there are wonderful people who work

with us—Nilov and Yashin—and we support them

with all our strength, but their districts were chosen in such a

way that there cannot be a

stronger candidate there. We didn't just

randomly nominate them. Yashin is running in

his own district, and there won't be anyone

more popular than him from the opposition

Sobol is running in the district

where last time second place was taken by

Yermolin, who ran from

Civic Platform, and this time he is not

running. So, in a sense, the number-two opposition

slot there is vacant, and they are planning to run

Sergei Mitrokhin there, and of course the chances

Sobol is simply much, much stronger by an order of magnitude.

Look, I have a great deal of respect for Sergei,

Mitrokhin, but he has taken part many times in

Moscow elections at every level, and frankly

his results were not exactly the most

impressive. And, basically,

he has always run in the northeast,

and repeatedly said that in the Moscow

elections he would not run at all. So Sobol

is the strongest candidate there. The same applies

to everyone else. That is exactly what Smart

Voting is about: we are not just telling you,

"vote for {URL_1}."

No, that is not how it works. We analyze things and

much more often than not, the point is that we

will say: vote for the Communist candidate.

In some places we will say: vote for a Yabloko candidate,

That is how the system will work across 45 districts.

That is what is happening in the elections right now.

In that sense, we are not trying to

pull the blanket over ourselves; we will mostly

be campaigning for other candidates. To wrap up the topic

of Yashin, I wanted to say one thing.

That video was most likely recorded in more than

one take. It really just

gets to me a little; it irritates me

because of how vile the whole situation is. They accused him

of kicking some cat,

but they themselves were filming it, and they themselves brought

the poor cat there and kicked it with their feet.

They shot three takes, apparently.

In two or three takes, they were calling it over,

shouting something like, "Kolya, come here,"

because someone had not kicked it hard enough, or

because, well, "you hit it right on the head, that is

not good, let's do it differently." And in between

takes, they were grabbing that poor cat by

the tail, and I would not be surprised if they had rubbed it with valerian.

On the one hand, it is funny; on the other hand,

it is sheer brutality, you have to admit.

It is the purest kind of depravity. All of this

United Russia and Sobyanin crowd, with access to

trillions of rubles and every possible

administrative resource, all their

TV channels—they cannot put out

a report saying, "Well, you know,

there is an election coming up, and Yashin is running in it,

he is an opposition politician, and we—United Russia, Putin,

and Sobyanin—are running on our own agenda.

We stand for this and that—for example, for

raising the retirement age, for increasing

the tax burden,

because that is what they actually support: the isolation

of the internet, laws banning criticism of

officials. We are going into this election with that agenda, and my

goal is to stop Yashin from winning." No, they

say nothing of the sort. Instead, they really

kick some cat with their feet. That is what our

authorities are like, and that is why this is how they must be fought.

And people from St. Petersburg ask me whether your team

will be running in the elections.

As for St. Petersburg, the city's development

and the future of St. Petersburg, honestly,

I will say this:

it is tied first and foremost to the federal authorities and to the mayor—

or rather, the governor of St. Petersburg.

You have this fellow running there,

a man named Beglov, an absolutely disgusting

character. I hope and believe there will be

some other candidates, but in any

case,

the concept is simple: vote for anyone

except Beglov.

And our people—and, in general, lots of

very, very good people—

are running in St. Petersburg's municipal

elections. More than 3,000 people are running there

as part of the team, so you should also come

to the polls in order to vote

against Beglov

and take part in Smart Voting in the

municipal deputy elections.

So, I am being asked about the

European Court of Human Rights.

This really is my personal—but not only my personal—

it is, after all, our shared

very good news: I won

at the European Court. Officially the case is called

Navalny v. Russia, but I still

see the case not as Navalny

v. Russia, but as Navalny v. Putin, or

Navalny v. United Russia—

however you want to put it. Because you, the viewers of this

program, are Russia too, but you were not the ones who kept me in

2014

under house arrest for an entire year.

It was completely illegal. I was not complaining about you;

I was complaining about those specific

scoundrels who did this. Several

years have passed, our legal team

worked excellently, and I proved that I was

right. They really are crooks, liars,

and scoundrels. The court found violations of several articles;

it recognized that the house arrest was illegal,

that my right to

freedom of expression had been violated, and it recognized the political

motivation behind it. They are to pay me compensation of €20,000,

20,000 euros to me and 2,000 euros to my

lawyers. I am very pleased. But, of course,

no one will give me back the year I spent under house

arrest, and no one will give my family

that time back either. I understand that.

But I do feel moral satisfaction from

this. And secondly, this is

ready-made evidence.

You see, in the Beautiful Russia of the Future,

we will not need to prove again what these

investigators who demanded house arrest,

the prosecutors who backed it,

and the judge—indeed, several judges—who

made those decisions did. We will not even have to

prove it further, because, say, we already have

the binding precedent of a European Court of Human Rights ruling

that recognizes it. And

Russia—even now, Putin's Russia—

recognizes that the European Court of Human

Rights stands at the top of the Russian

legal system, meaning this is binding.

This decision is not just something made somewhere out there,

off in the middle of nowhere. Russia recognizes these

decisions, so now we’re locking them all up,

and I think not even under house arrest anymore,

because, well, because there has already been

a court case, a months-long

proceeding on this matter. I just want to say that

thank you very much to everyone who

supported me. I definitely need to say

a few words about what happened in

Arkhangelsk,

This is a highly significant political event,

one that, it seems to me, has been somewhat underestimated

by the Russian media, including

both opposition and non-opposition media,

including independent outlets.

It happened over the weekend, first of all,

and second, it happened in Arkhangelsk, and

with the news, as soon as something happens in Moscow,

it’s as if nothing else anywhere matters.

But in fact, this is a major and important

event that, better than any opinion poll, better

than any focus group or study,

shows how much the situation in the country is changing.

Well, first of all, what is

happening in Arkhangelsk? The garbage, the garbage

mafia wants to bury waste somewhere out in the sticks,

and they raised the garbage removal tariff.

It’s a very profitable business, and for it

to become super-profitable, the people who

control the waste business—and that is,

first and foremost, the family of Prosecutor General

Yury Chaika—you can see his

wonderful, so to speak, highly photogenic

younger son, full of health and thirst for money.

They make money, and to make

even more money from garbage removal, what do you

need to do? Well, look, in a normal

country, here’s how it works: this cup,

I drank from it, threw it in the trash,

then it was taken out and sent for

recycling, and from it you get

paper again; from two old cups,

you get a new one, and so on indefinitely.

That’s how it works in normal countries. But

if your business is built on wanting to earn as much as possible

from the fact that

I threw away a cup and paid

you, I don’t know, one ruble for

disposing of it, then you can send it for

recycling and make, say, 10 kopecks on it,

or you can simply haul it off to

a dump in Arkhangelsk and make

twice as much on it,

100 kopecks, because there are basically no costs:

you take the garbage, load it into

a truck, drive somewhere, dump it, and that’s it.

The Moscow region is already buried in these landfills. Moscow itself—

that’s effectively around 15 million people—

just imagine how much

garbage it produces, plus the Moscow region,

which is really another 7 million people. It’s simply

this kind of black hole of Russia, where

money from all over the country flows, and which

produces an enormous amount of

ordinary household waste.

After all, this is where all the relatively wealthy

people in the country live; they consume

all of this stuff, and all of it

has to be thrown away afterward. Yes, this

cup will have to be thrown away, so

there is a huge, huge amount of garbage.

The Moscow region is overwhelmed, and protests have broken out there.

They wanted to take it to Yaroslavl,

but there were protests there too, so they decided, well,

to use Arkhangelsk Region, with its gigantic—let’s

take a look—just so those who don’t

have a good sense of the geography can see how

large Arkhangelsk Region is.

You can see it’s just—well, even if you

leave out Novaya Zemlya (the Arctic archipelago), it’s still

enormous, simply enormous,

of absolutely fantastic size,

a region. And they figured, well,

there’s plenty of land there, so we’ll just

haul the garbage there. And in Arkhangelsk

Region, which generally has never been

known for

major political activism or

anything like that, there arose a very real

uprising. There were several

very large rallies by Arkhangelsk standards,

after which the authorities, of course,

decided to ban the rallies, and

told people, basically, don’t show off—

we’re not piling this under your city, we’ve got plenty of land,

we’ll make some extra money from Muscovites

bringing their garbage and waste here, and you

are forbidden from holding rallies. Let’s

take a look at what a banned

rally in Arkhangelsk Region looks like.

It was quite a political spectacle.

[music]

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demands and holds... are not taking part

6 teams

[music]

[applause]

[music]

[music]

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I can.

[music]

[music]

I understand very well why

what happened there happened: there were three police cordons,

an unauthorized rally, and all three

police cordons were broken through, and

3,000 people marched through. For

an unauthorized march in

Arkhangelsk,

that is a lot. I’ve been there, and on this

program I constantly cite

Arkhangelsk Region as an example of

the looting of the country, the country’s decay, and

the country’s degradation, because the potential

this region has is enormous, but in fact

it has everything needed to thrive.

to develop, but this is the only place in

Russia where, not in some village but in a major

regional city, I saw with my own eyes

how, right in the center,

on Soviet Cosmonauts Avenue,

I’ve talked about this many times on this program:

people carry water in buckets.

Just completely devastated buildings; the city is in

a nightmarish state there.

There is simply monstrous poverty there. Formally,

the average salary in the city of

Arkhangelsk is 48,000 rubles a month (about $500–$550 in period terms), but in practice

it is much lower, even taking into account those

regional coefficients. Life there is quite hard,

and I understand very well why people

came out in protest like this, and why

the police—we saw that they stood there,

of course, but essentially they did not

put up much resistance, because the residents

of Arkhangelsk, just like earlier the residents

of Yaroslavl, and before that the residents

of other towns in the outer Moscow region,

like Volokolamsk, are saying: listen, so

here we are, living in poverty; damn it, we

don’t have sewage, we don’t have running water in

our city, we don’t have a damn thing, we’ve

been robbed blind.

Your Putin, your government—but no,

they say: your Putin, your government.

There’s a saying about Arkhangelsk

Region:

timber, cod, and longing. That’s what they themselves

say they have—three things. All the

money is siphoned out of there

to the federal center, to Moscow, and in return

—not everyone says it this way, but still—why the hell

is everything arranged like this?

They took everything from us—not just took it,

but now they also send back to us their

waste; they send us their

garbage so that we not only live in poverty

but live in poverty next to Moscow’s

dump. And the main thing is, here our

city-forming enterprise, our main

landmark, our main business

will be that the children of the Prosecutor General

will set up, right next to our homes, in our

region, in Pomorye (the Russian North around Arkhangelsk),

a dump, and pay us something for it. And I

understand very well those people who

simply came out—simply

to stand up for their dignity. It’s probably not

that the garbage is literally right now

lying next to Arkhangelsk—

it’s actually quite far from Arkhangelsk—

but they understand that this is being

done deliberately so as not to

create proper waste processing and

a proper waste

management site. They’ll just come, dump it, and

make money off that. People do not want to

put up with this, so of course I

fully support them. And I supported them even more

when I saw the speech by the

governor. Well, I’ll show you now

40 seconds—watch for yourselves,

think about it. What an insolent face.

The governor—what does he think about his

fellow countrymen, his fellow citizens, who came out

simply to say: we do not want

Moscow’s garbage here. However, not all of these

these

fixers have appeared.

Come on, let’s take… [fragment unclear]

Again, if I were to go by the numbers,

if I were guided by the numbers, I should have

hanged myself on May 13, 2012.

Hell no—they’ll be waiting forever for me to hang myself.

I know what I’m doing, I know I’m right, and for

more than 20 years I’ve lived here, my

children were born here, and all sorts of riffraff who

are nobody here and have no standing are trying to

call me all kinds of things.

I’ve been on this land for 28 years.

So I don’t give a damn about their

ratings, their voting, or what they

think about me. You see—he doesn’t care about any of it.

He doesn’t care, and he says it with this, you know,

air of compassion: if I had

gone by the numbers, I would have had

to hang myself—apparently meaning

the date of his appointment.

But you won’t get your wish, because I will remain

governor. I will bear this cross.

That thieving mug sits there making money

together with all his garbage

cronies.

And as for “my children have been here 28 years” — what

children for 28 years? Your whole United Russia party and all

your children are certainly not going to live there, not at that

landfill. But there you have it—he doesn’t

like it

when someone speaks out against him. People like that

he calls riffraff.

I very much hope that in Arkhangelsk

Region

these protests will continue, and that they

will continue across the whole country until

this entire mafia—

Sobyanin, Chemezov, the people dealing with our garbage,

and Prosecutor General Chaika’s children, Shuvalov’s

—Shuvalov’s, sorry—

that mafia, and the Shelkovsky family is also quite

actively

involved in this garbage

business—until they understand: if you want

to be in this business, then do recycling.

There should be no such thing as simply dumping garbage

somewhere into a pit. That should not exist. It does not

happen in a single normal

country, and nobody in Russia—neither in

Arkhangelsk nor in Moscow—likes

your idea that you are now going to make excellent money

simply by

servicing

a giant city while scattering its garbage across

the whole country. So I want to send my greetings

and support to the residents of Arkhangelsk, since

We were talking about video addresses.

There was also a very important video address this

week, and another one came to us from

the Rosgvardiya (Russia’s National Guard). They seem to have taken a liking there

to recording video addresses, apparently.

For some reason, though, they’re very different stylistically,

very different. At first, somehow, they

shifted from lofty wisdom and bragging

to something a little different. First, I want

to remind you of the first video address

that came to us from fighters—from

Rosgvardiya personnel: they said that you are a product

of an American test tube,

all clones and all that, of course, so that

the people are just puppets to you,

that’s how you talk about them, without any

shame. You’re rotten inside,

completely decayed. You have neither spirituality nor

morality—absolutely nothing. You’re

just tumbleweed. But I want to say this:

you seem to get a real thrill from the fact that you

attack the authorities and never got

a response in return. You probably feel very much like

hunting dogs on the trail,

sneaking up on their prey. But in reality

you’re just

an opposition lapdog that has imagined itself

to be a lion.

Remember? Of course I remember. It was quite something,

the way this man spoke on behalf of

all of Rosgvardiya. Then, in the next

address, which was recorded by the newspaper

*Komsomolskaya Pravda* (a Russian tabloid newspaper),

he said that behind him stood 300,000

Rosgvardiya personnel, and that all this

was about spirituality,

about our solid values, that we are for Russia, we are for

ordinary people. And you—you heard it—you

hate ordinary people, you call them

cattle—that’s what he told me. And now

there’s a second address from Rosgvardiya personnel,

and it looks completely different, because

the truth is that they do not consider

even their own people to be people. These

employees were housed there, and the essence

of the conflict is that

these OMON riot police officers and Rosgvardiya men were placed in

non-residential premises. On paper, these were

non-residential spaces; they had no right

to live there, and yet they were housed there and paid

utility and housing fees for those non-residential premises. And

then, now that they’ve retired, they were

told: well, guys, these

premises can’t be privatized,

you’re not allowed to live in them, so please

vacate the premises. As they put it,

‘you are obstructing citizens’ passage’—they told them, ‘you’re

interfering with our ability to make money,’ as

Zolotov said. And Rosgvardiya pensioners began to be

evicted. Please watch these 28 seconds.

I’m not going to say which of these people it is, but

I know one of them, because he was

When I watched this

video, of course my first thought was

a certain sense of schadenfreude, but then it

passed. I’ll explain that. But one of these

guys was the head of the escort detail

when they were transporting me—first to the detention facility, then

to court. I mean, we spent quite a bit of time there,

waiting around—you sit there and wait—so I

talked for quite a long time with him and his colleagues

about all sorts of things. When I saw it, because

it was a familiar face.

So in that sense it wasn’t just some abstract story anymore.

As for this situation, because he is

a retired National Guard officer,

but anyway, you’ll see now:

there are four of them, and one of them was, well,

the supervising officer of my escort

or—I don’t know—the overseer of that

escort. In short, he was the one transporting me.

Address from deceived Rosgvardiya officers.

Retired Rosgvardiya officers are appealing to you

with a request to resolve our problem. In 2010,

we, as employees of the Moscow OMON riot police,

were allocated housing in a newly built building on

the grounds of the OMON compound. However, upon

retirement,

instead of words of gratitude for our service,

we received notices of eviction from

non-residential premises. It turned out that for

nine years our families, together with

us and our young children,

had been living in non-residential premises. However, in

the utility bills

the place where we live is listed

as residential. So it turns out that

when they want to collect money from us,

the premises become residential, but when it comes

to allowing us to stay there until we receive

the one-time housing payment,

these premises suddenly become non-residential. Why is it that we,

while serving the state,

carried out combat missions, including

in hotspots and at Manezhnaya Square and

Bolotnaya Square (sites of major protest crackdowns in Moscow),

but as a result, after retiring,

we ourselves ended up outside the law?

Like everyone else, of course, what struck me was

this phrase:

‘carrying out combat missions in hotspots,’

including at Manezhnaya and Bolotnaya

Squares. Yes, and of course, like everyone

else, I saw in the comments that everyone

was writing something like:

‘You were the ones beating back those people at Bolotnaya,’

‘so now you’re getting what you deserve.’ Let’s

take a look—28 seconds—at how they

‘carried out combat missions’ at Bolotnaya.

[music]

There.

That’s how it was done.

I feel no schadenfreude toward these evicted

OMON officers—none at all, really, toward

them in general. I have no schadenfreude.

Because this is still brutality, this

eviction is brutality. They’re not being

punished for what they did there.

It’s not that they did something wrong — the system just...

...chewed them up and spit them out. But of course,

it’s very important to say, and to remind everyone, I would

like every National Guard serviceman, if he is

a decent person — including these

people here; I’m sure this acquaintance of mine from

this video will of course watch this clip — but

guys, you do understand that what happened to you

happened

precisely because you were beating

people at Bolotnaya (Bolotnaya Square protests in Moscow), because at Bolotnaya

those who came out were standing up for your

interests. They weren’t there for me personally,

they were there so that in Russia there would be

the rule of law, so that in Russia

justice would prevail. And

justice means that

if you lived in premises that were

allocated to you by the National Guard, and if you paid for

them, then of course they are residential housing.

This whole category of residential versus non-residential

— if the state, in the person of your superiors,

housed you there and collected money from you,

then of course the premises are residential, of course.

You have the right, on the same basis as anyone else,

to privatize it or do whatever else with

it. But that is exactly what people came out for:

so there would not be arbitrary, abusive bosses. You beat them

because the bosses wanted to.

They wanted to evict people, and you dispersed them — but now

now you yourselves have been

evicted. But overall, I certainly

sympathize with those people. Yes, they hauled me around

to police stations and all that, but still

you understand, this same system devours everyone.

Right now, we’ve seen four people

from 20 families

who spoke out — they’re from the National Guard. But

those who did not record a video appeal

— and by the way, good for those who did record one,

really, good for them for making that

appeal. If they hadn’t, we would never have heard

about it at all. I don’t know whether

their problem will be solved — it may be,

or it may not.

But if you don’t record one, then nothing

will happen. And these cops

are being evicted all across the country in exactly the same way.

EMERCOM personnel are being evicted, FSB officers are being evicted too,

everyone is being evicted — there are constantly some problems with

apartments and housing for all the rest. I have

no sense of schadenfreude at all

toward these people, because if

those who beat people at Bolotnaya were put on trial,

I would stand there and say: yes, that’s right, you are

going after the right people, imprisoning the right ones.

But with these people — no, that would be mistaken. Still, I

hope that all of this becomes a major

lesson for all National Guard personnel.

I have no illusions that this means

that tomorrow, when they are told to go disperse

some rally,

they won’t do it. They will disperse it.

They’ll drag me into a police van (avtozak),

take me there, and then say, like this

little bug once told me: well, of course, overall

we support what you’re doing, but

of course we’re still dragging you into the van.

Then we’ll drag you to court, then

we’ll drag you off to a detention cell. Nevertheless,

still, think, guys. Don’t be

idiots, because you will never earn

anything for yourselves this way, and by

dispersing people out there, you are only making

your own poverty worse.

By the way, create a police

union. Join a police

union. All over the world, police

unions are a very powerful force that

pushes back against exactly these kinds of things, because

police leadership always

acts, simply by definition, in

every country, against its rank-and-file

officers. In Russia this is happening too, and

your only allies here are those — well, those who

go out to Bolotnaya. Just admit it.

Work with them, and, well, carry out

subversive work from within, and vote — I mean,

if you can’t go out to

protests right now, vote against them, take part

in Smart Voting, spread

the word: Zolotov is robbing you,

Zolotov is stealing from you, Zolotov is throwing you out of your apartments.

Yes, of course, within the opposition environment

no one has any especially warm feelings toward you.

We don’t need to have any feelings toward you.

You need to fight for your rights,

because under this government you will always

be lying there licking boots and

knocking people down — and the same thing will be done to all of you.

That’s exactly how they’ll treat you. All right, let me look

at a question someone is sending me on

Soli’s stream. Windrunner asks me: “Alexei,

today they passed the bill on the

sovereign internet in its first reading. What should we expect?” Well, I

think they may already have passed it in the second reading too.

I never had the slightest

doubt that they would pass this law,

regardless of any protest. This is a key

law for Putin’s state, for

Putin himself, because it will allow him

to block programs like mine,

to block Telegram channels. But they’ve already

realized that the internet has become bigger than

television.

I started the program by saying:

subscribe, guys, I want a million

subscribers. Well, not just a million subscribers — 4

million unique viewers. That’s less

than Channel One, but it’s still

quite a lot. He doesn’t like that at all,

which is why he is pushing this law on

the sovereign internet — so they can shut it down.

So I have no doubt they will pass it.

After the second reading, it will go to the third,

it will be signed very quickly, and then

the first thing they’ll start blocking is Telegram,

and more generally, they will keep blocking things.

they're already experimenting with blocking

Twitter, social media, and YouTube channels, and so on

and so on. Sergey asks me about

Please comment on the situation with

the blocking of media resources by VTB, but here

what is meant is rather that VTB is blocki-

blocking media resources—they are being blocked

VTB media resources

The story really is that

Kostin, the head of VTB Bank, has

a girlfriend, a woman named Nailya Asker-zade

Asker-zade, whom I actually will

mention, because she is Nailya

Asker-zade, who was a correspondent for

Vedomosti, covering VTB's work, and she was

extremely oppositional. Back then I attended as a

minority shareholder at VTB meetings, and

very often Nailya and I sat next to each other

and gossiped about this Kostin

discussing what a crook, an idiot, just generally

a scoundrel he was. And then somehow she became close with him

and became friendly with him

and, as I understand it, they had children together

whether secretly or not, and now there is an unimaginable

colossal amount of real estate

I fully confirm this—we looked into all of it

all of it, and there is not the slightest doubt that

Kostin is stealing billions, and part of

those billions he simply funnels to his

mistresses, including Nailya

Asker-zade. They block all resources

Roskomnadzor (Russia’s state media and communications regulator) is doing it left and right

where anything at all is mentioned about

this situation. By the way, I am very interested

to see what they will do with

this episode of mine, because it simply

is setting records. But usually these records

concern the activities of the FBK (Anti-Corruption Foundation), but apparently he

apparently just paid someone there at

Roskomnadzor, brought over several suitcases

of money, and now, in my opinion, the latest

article

where this whole story was mentioned at all

was blocked within 15 minutes

They do not even need any court decisions anymore

they just monitor all of this and

simply block it completely arbitrarily

absolutely unlawfully—Telegram channels too

they are trying to block absolutely everything

they are wiping it all clean. But this is, of course, absolutely

outrageous. I absolutely want to say

completely plainly, as I have said many times

Kostin is a thief. He is robbing the state-owned

VTB bank, and he transfers enormous amounts—

tens of millions of dollars—

to his mistresses and spends this money

on supporting her, on maintaining

luxury apartments, on supporting

their children together, and so on. In other words,

this is simply a situation for which all of them

should be put on trial immediately, tomorrow

but for now the opposite is happening, when

they are shutting everyone up. In the previous segment

I spoke about Zolotov of the National Guard (Rosgvardiya)

Zolotov is known to us as someone who

became famous throughout the whole country, after all

probably after my

investigation into how he steals money

on food procurement. And you will laugh, we had

a small but very

illustrative story, almost like

the Zolotov story, just so that each of you

understands one important thing: Zolotov, or

a typical Putin-era Zolotov, is much

closer to you than it seems. You think that

there is some guy in Moscow who, through billion-ruble contracts,

buys potatoes at four times

the real price. But no—in the building you see

from your apartment, almost certainly

the same thing is happening too. In St. Petersburg there was

a great story

You know that we support the trade union

Teachers’ Alliance, and there

a kindergarten teacher made

a video appeal and recorded her conversation

with the principal about how she was not being

paid her full wages, and

the principal there says, well, complaining

is useless. If you complain, we already had people here

who complained all the way to Putin, and in such cases

it only got worse—they had their

salary cut altogether. Let's watch this excerpt

Hello, my name is Maria

Valevskaya. I work in the city of

St. Petersburg at kindergarten No.

5 in the Vyborg District. The administration

of our kindergarten signed

new supplementary agreements with us

under which extra payments were either reduced or

removed entirely. After receiving my salary

in February, I immediately went to

the management of our kindergarten and

asked on what grounds

our salaries had been lowered. Verbally, I was

told that if I was not

satisfied with my new salary, I

could resign from the kindergarten

Excellent. This Maria Valevskaya

did the right thing by recording this appeal. Well,

basically, she stood up for

the salary that had been promised to her. What

happened next? Naturally, the principal

started pressuring and intimidating her. Well,

the person was left one-on-one with the system

all alone. She thought, now I will

she thought, she posted some video on the internet

and thinks someone will protect her? No way, I will

devour her

and so she started gradually doing just that. But

there is a great guy named Danilkin who

heads the Teachers’ Alliance in

St. Petersburg

he decided not to let one of his people

be mistreated, and he did a very simple thing. Well,

the principal said that we do not have

the money to raise your

salary, that we have no money for anything at all

none at all, please understand our situation, as they

They say there's no money, and he did something amazing.

A very simple thing, and I somehow just hadn't

thought of it. You stop thinking when the scale is like that.

He went and looked into the procurement records

of this kindergarten and the kindergarten's budget.

It turns out there are contracts worth 23

million rubles, so he decided to simply compare the prices at which

they were buying

food for the little kids in the kindergarten

and the prices at which you can buy the same products

just by going to a store

at retail, and the difference, honestly,

is striking. Let's watch

the video that tells this

story. An employee of kindergarten

No. 5 in Vyborgsky District

spoke about the tiny wages

at the institution and said they intend to fight for

higher pay. We have great news: our

trade union found where to get the money. We

decided to look on the public procurement website

at what contracts this kindergarten

was signing, and we noticed the supply of

food products.

Sady Pridonya apple juice is one of

the cheapest juices. It cost me 55

rubles, but Tsygankova buys it at a price of

140 rubles per liter.

And under the contract, more than

a thousand such packs are to be delivered. Oranges, first grade:

first grade.

I got them for 49.90 rubles, but the kindergarten

buys them at three times that price,

146 rubles per kilogram.

Pumpkin, turnips, rutabaga—these are some of the cheapest

vegetables. The kindergarten buys them by the hundreds of

kilograms at an average price of 120 rubles

per kilogram.

That's several times more expensive than retail, and the same

pattern can be seen for practically all

items.

And that's more than 100 line items. We will definitely

continue investigating Tsygankova's schemes,

seek punishment for her,

and demand pay raises for

the kindergarten's other employees.

Turnips, rutabaga, and oranges—but every time

you see something like this,

you think: damn, how do they even have

the nerve?

Oranges—everyone buys oranges, fine, but I can't

probably say off the top of my head

what the market price of rutabaga is, but

everyone buys oranges, and when you're

buying

oranges at three times the price they're

sold for in the store, how do you even

explain that to your accounting department,

to your staff? I mean, this is something

that really lets you measure the sheer recklessness

and greed of these

people.

They just go ahead and buy

these oranges at three times the price. But no

doubt she's obviously sharing it with

someone in the district administration

or, I don't know, at Smolny (St. Petersburg city administration), at city hall, in

the St. Petersburg administration—someone.

She's obviously passing along some of those

kickbacks. But even so, the audacity of stealing this

money is astonishing. I mean, when you're stealing on

a construction project, you can always say,

"We used this here, I needed a ton

of bricks, or four tons, or we started

digging and hit quicksand, so we had to

pour in 130, I don't know, truckloads of cement." But

this is orange procurement—that's what it comes down to.

That's why I'm telling all of you, guys,

especially public-sector workers: create

trade unions. Don't stay silent—fight

for your rights, because this director

—the video is just too long, I can't

show it in full—but there they also break down

her salary. She gets more than

100,000 rubles in salary, plus she steals

millions on these food contracts. Of course

she's doing great, and of course she's going to

keep all her

teachers under her thumb.

But do you think she wants to pay them

a decent salary by saving money on

food purchases? No, she doesn't. She wants

to work

as a director for five years, earn

a million dollars in that time, and buy herself a house

in Spain. That's what she wants. We tend to think,

well, good grief,

it's just a kindergarten—how much can a

kindergarten director really steal? Maybe she'll steal

some toilet paper, a diaper, or

some little children's slide and haul it off

to her dacha (country house). But no—it turns out that's not the case.

It's millions of rubles. So yes, well done, Ken—

well done.

And well done to the teacher who wasn't afraid.

In fact, everyone who comes forward deserves credit. By the way,

I see people asking a lot of questions

about whether anyone actually achieves anything, whether

trade unions get results. Trade unions do

get results, because under a lying stone

water does not flow (nothing happens unless you act). A person does something, and then

things change. Here's 40 seconds: a teacher from

Tambov—a simple success story. In March

of this year, I appealed to the prosecutor's office

demanding an explanation for why my

salary was only 11,000

rubles. I am now continuing to fight

for decent pay and conditions for myself and

other teachers. In my pay slip for the last month,

I saw a bonus of

800 rubles.

The school administration, for its part, has been willing

to engage and is ready to continue discussing

improvements to working conditions.

I will fight for higher wages.

The only way to fight for real wage increases and

better working conditions is by joining together

in a trade union. Join the trade union.

Teachers' Alliance

I know that

at this point, many of you said

come on, what kind of success is that—like 800 rubles (about $9) on top of 800 rubles?

they raised his salary—he was earning 11

so it turns out we raised it by almost 10

percent, which is still monstrously low

which still absolutely does not correspond

to what he should be paid, but still

here's how it works: he wrote a complaint, recorded a video

posted an appeal video, and they got scared

and started moving because at that moment they

realized there was this guy named Artyom

in Tambov Region who was not going to

stay silent, and it was better not to

mess with him, but to start raising his pay at least

a little bit, little by little, so that

he wouldn't later say, you know,

I appealed, I complained, and they didn't respond

they'll tell everyone we don't respond, but we do

respond

look, see, they raised his salary there by 8

percent

then we'll raise it by another 8, then raise it

by another 28—because otherwise, if you stay silent like that

it will never go up. That's why I

once again, of course, urge everyone to actively

take part in this work

it is more important than any party

activity. Yes, I talk so much

about trade unions, and I sometimes see people write, like,

"you're so damn annoying with this union stuff"

but what politics could be more important than

the struggle to raise wages—not

just for public-sector workers, but for everyone? That is

the very basis of politics. A funny story,

by the way, to wrap up on trade unions

in Cheboksary, this happened there, you know

they simply

issued a special directive

saying that all teachers

were forbidden from interacting with

the trade union

Teachers' Alliance because it is a bad

union—it demands higher wages

we have a pretty active union leader there

Semyon Kochkin in Cheboksary; he himself is a

teacher, a former teacher, and he is engaged

very actively, and they got scared that

so they issued special directives: do not join

the union. Usually it's United Russia party members (the Kremlin-backed ruling party)

who come out with rhetoric like this:

basically, shut up, everyone, be quiet and

be quiet and be grateful for your tiny

salary. And if anyone doesn't like it here

pack your bags and leave. I like

showing videos like that because people like these

are the most dangerous. We must fight

those brazen faces who look at

us and say, well, if you don't like it

just pack up and leave, or emigrate if you don't

like Russia

I like Russia, yes, we like

Russia—you are the ones we don't like. When a person

there in France thinks that something

is arranged wrongly

no one suggests that he leave

France. He puts on a yellow vest and goes

out into the street, or, on the contrary, doesn't put on a vest

but goes to vote against some

politician, or joins a trade union

or organizes a strike. That's how it should

all work. But these scoundrels

tell us to leave. But this

week, it wasn't a United Russia member who delivered a striking performance, but

rather another kind of symbol of Putin's

Russia. We have these United Russia types

with brazen faces, and then there is this

bohemia and elite with their glamorous lives, and

Anastasia Volochkova on Echo of Moscow (a well-known Russian radio station)

basically became the flagship of this

social Darwinism. She told everyone

that, well, if you're poor here then

stop sitting on a bench smoking and

go do some work. I think

it deserves that we watch this

one minute and eight seconds

Ballerina Volochkova: "My dears, everyone who

doesn't like it here, get up and go to

other countries and live there. But really, I

would like to call for something completely different, and

as for the poor—they cannot become, and they

you know what your 20

million poor people who are unhappy with

Putin—they should stand up and in front of

themselves, stand before their own conscience and ask

the question, not blame someone or beg with outstretched hands

because they live below the subsistence minimum

their incomes are low—well then let them

work, excuse me, instead of sitting around smoking on the porch

let them work and think about

what each of them, and each of us,

can actually do for the good

of our country. Why should we blame

the president, directors of some

structures, companies, for everything?

Why can't we blame ourselves?

A pensioner worked for 50 years and now he has

a pension—fine, but what

can be done if it's 11,000 rubles (about $120), and that's in the best

case

So what? And why is the

president to blame for that? Please explain that to me."

There you have it: a person worked all their life at a

factory, worked there from morning till

night, then retires and gets

11,000 rubles (about $120). You know, that's not the biggest

problem in our country, apparently

11,000 isn't the biggest problem

in our country. Of course not, that's not the

biggest one. The biggest problem in our

country is that nobody else can do

such an impressive

split as Anastasia Volochkova, who

it seems to me has already photographed herself in her

famous split with just about every

object on planet Earth, with every

pole, every palm tree, and with

with each one, I don't even know what, but jokes aside

that's basically what she said there, you could say

an absurd, foolish woman — no, that's what

you just heard, actually

the way you look at what's happening — United Russia members

are telling us the same thing, just without

the splits

Volochkova is standing in the splits next to a palm tree

they're just standing there side by side, stars — and you

they're saying essentially the same thing. So, Artyom Mirkin

a music teacher from Michurinsk

earns... well, Artyom, just think about it, please

maybe you should start working properly there? And he

says, well, I mean, I do work, I

am a music teacher, I want to live in

Michurinsk, I like music, I

teach. And the response is: what are you, an idiot or something?

Think about it — maybe you should somehow

work? He tells them: yes, I do work, yes, I

work. They say: well, you could just

work better. But if you don't like it,

Artyom Mirkin, well then maybe it's Putin you don't like

after all. Then maybe you should pack up

your suitcase and get out of Michurinsk altogether

if those places aren't good enough for you

that's exactly the kind of dialogue it is

exactly the kind of dialogue that the entire

establishment of our country is having

They're just brazen people who think that

what they do is some kind of real work, while

those people who, because of various

circumstances, because, you know,

well,

sometimes there are people who like

living in Michurinsk

and like working as a teacher

but somehow the response is: are you stupid or what?

If you live in Michurinsk, then suffer

That's literally how they think. It's a direct

line of reasoning: your choice to live in a region, in

Arkhangelsk, Michurinsk, or Novosibirsk

means that you're somehow incomplete, and you

must suffer, and on top of that you must constantly

blame yourself. You heard it from Putin, didn't you?

Blame yourself, blame only yourself. No, you had

your wages stolen from you, you had

your pension stolen, the retirement age was raised,

your pension savings were stolen from you,

and you should think about

how much of this is your own fault. That's why we have

such a high, by the way,

suicide rate, actually. Because

people are constantly being told that they

are personally to blame for everything, even for the fact that

they live in the provinces — poor you,

it's your own fault your salary is low, it's

your own fault. But what is a person guilty of?

Does everyone have to become some kind of

entrepreneur or oligarch? After all, there are

simply, in the end, people who do not

want to do that. They just want

to be a lathe operator and earn a normal

decent wage, the kind that exists all over

the world, exists everywhere in the world

There are music teachers everywhere in the world, and they earn

a normal salary. But only in Russia

does this person have to suffer, and in

their free time from working for miserable

wages, they have to come home

and analyze what they did wrong

before

Anastasia Volochkova for that day. As for

Assange, I will still say a couple of words — this is

a very important event. Once,

when Assange was such a trendy guy, and

I had only just released my first investigation,

I was a very trendy guy too. Everyone

loved calling me the Russian Assange

and saying I had studied at Yale University

and everyone discussed it, and all foreign

journalists did it, which irritated me terribly, because

in order

to explain to a Western reader who I was

and what I did, they all called

me the Russian Assange, even though that was absolutely

not true. We never dealt with any kind of

secret information leaks, because

Assange published classified information

while the Anti-Corruption Foundation has always worked

from open sources. Today he was

handed over — stripped of asylum protection by the Embassy

of Ecuador, after which British

police officers took him by the arms, dragged him out, and

arrested him. What do I want to say about this?

I believe that, of course, Assange should not

be arrested. I believe that

there should be legal proceedings. I have

not the slightest warm feelings toward him

at all. Once, he did play a positive

role overall because he exposed

information, including about

various rather unpleasant

and disgusting schemes that

government authorities organize. But he did

it carelessly, because, well, clearly, he

doesn't like intelligence services very much, doesn't like

intelligence services. You may dislike Russian

intelligence, and, you know, for example I may

dislike Russian intelligence, but if

tomorrow I get documents about our

operatives, I don't know, somewhere in

Afghanistan, am I going to publish them?

I hate Putin, sure, but am I going to

publish those documents? Probably not,

because they would be killed tomorrow if I

exposed them, and if they're somewhere in Afghanistan or

Pakistan, in some country like that, I don't

know, maybe there are some of our people there

who went there

working as intelligence officers or our agents

who were recruited — if I reveal their list or

publish correspondence in such a way that they can

easily be identified, well, they'll be killed. I will not

take that responsibility on myself

If I publish something, I will

do it, if I publish it, in such

a way that no one gets hurt

even if those intelligence officers are commanded by

such disgusting, vile people there, these...

FSB types (Russia’s security service), or I don’t know, maybe the opposite,

KGB men (security-service operatives).

You can’t do that. Assange did, and because of

him, various people suffered. But overall,

overall he

acted in the public interest.

Lately, though, he has simply

turned, unfortunately, into

some petty sidekick for RT (Russia Today),

basically part of Putin’s service staff, and it was

very hard to watch. He worked on

that RT channel. By the way, they invited me

there, onto his program, several times, because

there was this whole story: they wanted

to make it go viral, and here I was, this opposition figure,

and so RT—and Assange said

in one interview that he had asked

whether I could be invited onto the program.

After all that discussion, we even

agreed on my participation in the program. I

didn’t go myself either—I don’t want to have

anything to do with RT.

In general, over the last couple of years, he has simply

been engaged in something truly disgusting. They

were publishing completely fabricated

emails. By that point, the Kremlin was apparently directly

supplying him with information, as I understand it,

for publication. In other words, he turned into

one of Putin’s political operatives.

However, the question is: should he be

arrested for this activity of his? No.

He was engaged in ordinary journalistic

work. There are plenty of journalists,

pleasant or unpleasant,

who do similar things. It’s just that Assange

specifically got involved with the special services,

with intelligence agencies, and they’re taking revenge on him for that, for that they’re

trying to crush him completely. I

hope there will be some kind of

fair trial in Britain. As for the accusations, I

still hope—he sat in that

embassy for seven years, and, if I remember right, another year

under house arrest. I can tell you

that house arrest may seem like

nothing much, but

to sit under it—not even for seven years,

even for a year—is quite unpleasant, and I

believe that what is happening to him is,

of course, unjust. He is being tried

formally on charges related to

cyber intrusions, but we more or less

understand that the context around all this

is that someone decided to get in touch with

our all-powerful special services (security agencies).

Well, now you’ll regret it. That is exactly why

he is being prosecuted. So I can’t

really, as it were, support

that, of course. I’ll say a couple of words

about the ‘dream salary’—this

really made an impression on me.

This thing about the ‘dream salary’: the Financial

University under the Government conducted

a study and asked Russian citizens

what salary would make them

happy, and it turned out that the overwhelming

majority of Russian citizens named 66,000

rubles a month on average. In Moscow and

St. Petersburg, people named somewhat higher figures;

in some regions, lower ones. But 66,000

rubles is the dream salary. What have we

come to? To what degree of

degradation has Russia sunk?

A nuclear power, broadly speaking,

technologically advanced, we fly into space—

and 66,000 rubles is about a thousand

dollars. That means the minimum wage in

Slovenia is higher than that, while for us this is

a dream salary. Damn—in Slovenia,

which, let’s be honest,

is a fine country, I have nothing against

Slovenia, but we want to think—and probably do think—that

Russia is, overall, a more powerful

country

than Slovenia, with all due respect. Yet there

the minimum wage

is the same as our dream salary. We

dream of what in Slovenia is

the subsistence minimum; in Belgium, the minimum

wage is twice as high

as our dream salary, you understand?

There, any

migrant coming to take a job

mopping floors

must earn twice as much as

our dream salary. This is very important,

very important to talk about. That’s why I

generally focus on wages, on the fact that

people are underpaid, because our entire

economy is one giant

disproportion. All the money is siphoned off to who knows where,

to God knows where. People are simply

underpaid. No matter who you are,

if you work in a bank, you’re underpaid;

if you work as a teacher, you’re underpaid; if you

work as a janitor, you’re underpaid,

because, fundamentally, our economy

is structured in such a way that taxes are

huge and wages are small.

The share of wages in costs is small everywhere.

It is small, and until we start

fighting for decent wages and do not

recognize that this 66,000 is poverty, we

won’t achieve anything. And this is happening, by the way,

because we keep wondering

how competent the Russian government is.

Now I’m going to show you Putin for 40

seconds talking about his favorite

topic: import substitution. They’ve been

obsessed with this import substitution since 2014,

when sanctions started being introduced. They declared,

okay, we don’t care about sanctions, we’ll have

import substitution. With this

import substitution, like parrots, they

talk about it all day long, about how great

import substitution will be.

And it seemed to us that, at the very least,

Putin was the flagship of import substitution.

has any idea how much the budget actually invested

in this process—at least the rough order

of magnitude. But anyway, let’s watch. 40

seconds. Putin and his favorite thing:

import substitution. Last year we invested

we invested

in import substitution—that is, in order

to produce ourselves what we used to

buy abroad—600 billion

600 how much did everyone invest last year in

import substitution? The minister doesn’t remember

the economy and economic development minister

well, it means several hundred

billion for sure—hundreds of billions of rubles, and, and

that

that would be about a billion, about

a billion rubles, and that would be sales

you see, like hundreds of billions, 600

billion—oh no, a billion—and this will

go on somehow

kind of from 600 billion to a billion, but

that’s a huge gap. They don’t know a damn thing. It means

that there is no

import substitution at all, and these are the people

running the country—and this Oreshkin

poor fellow sitting there, they say about him,

well, he worked at a Western bank,

he’s a top professional. He’s nothing of the sort,

not a top professional at all. This is really a gang

of crooks. They do nothing except

carving up the budget, and the best of them

are simply busy protecting their positions. They

have absolutely no

idea about real processes

therefore

and they keep imposing these insane taxes and

raising the pension age, well, because

the numbers just float around like that: 600

billion or a billion, I don’t remember exactly

Oreshkin, how much was it there? Well, you don’t

remember either. Well, I’ll just say it—these

billions are just pulled out of thin air. But when

a teacher comes to them and says,

let’s raise it from 11 to 15

they answer very clearly: no, impossible

can’t, can’t, can’t, can’t—we have the numbers

showing that it can’t be increased, that’s it

and of course, because of the quality of this governance, we all

suffer badly, and as long as they remain in office

things won’t get better. In closing, I still want

to say something about Chubais and our Anatoly

Borisovich (Anatoly Chubais). Of course, they should have put up

him with Volochkova, because they’re like twin

brothers

I think they could even do the splits

equally well—that is, Chubais can do

the same impressive splits, and Volochkova (a Russian ballerina and media personality)

can do just as brilliant a job at

managing nanotechnology

Chubais got upset because, apparently, I went after

Mikhail Abyzov

and wrote a Facebook post, reposting

some very funny

person who wrote that Abyzov

worked very effectively in the government

was some kind of best minister, the most

wonderful, marvelous person, and

introducing this post, Chubais

wrote that so much is being said about

Mikhail Abyzov, a wonderful man

and especially much is being said by Alexei Navalny

I quote further

so, “moving dynamically over to the side of law enforcement,”

Alexei Navalny is dynamically running over

for whom aggressive lying

is becoming simply an obligatory part

of his left-wing anti-bourgeois agenda.” This is

great, you see. And what is happening in

Russia

they actually consider capitalism and

a bourgeois agenda. So if you don’t

like Volochkova or Chubais, that’s

aggressive lying and an anti-bourgeois

agenda, because otherwise, well, these

people are building and doing something

wonderful. But the tablet—do you remember how

Chubais got billions

out of our pockets and told us there would be

a super-mega tablet that would be sold to all

children, and children would finally run to school not

with huge backpacks full of notebooks and

textbooks

but with small, thin, convenient

tablets. Anatoly Borisovich, let’s

take a look at this tablet to

refresh our memory. 31 seconds. A unique

tablet computer was presented at a

meeting with the Prime Minister of Russia

Vladimir Putin by the head of Rusnano

Anatoly Chubais. Unlike Western

counterparts, the new electronic device

is made not on a silicon basis but on

the basis of a special plastic. In Chubais’s view,

such a computer is capable of

making life easier for Russian schoolchildren

today we understood that this

technological

product

a computer without silicon can have

applications in the field of education

Everyone has already forgotten, forgotten it all. It was

several years ago, and how pompous they were

waving this tablet computer in our faces

when I—well, I consistently, from

the moment Rusnano was created, said that this

was a fraud, a fake

they would simply steal all the money, just as Chubais

systematically wrecked and looted

absolutely everywhere he ever was; likewise in

Rusnano, they would strip everything bare. They told us

look, it’s not silicon-based

with this tablet, back then

they kept fussing over it for almost a year, and then when

it turned out that hundreds

of millions of dollars had been poured into it, they somehow forgot about

it. And remember, I had a debate with

Chubais

and he solemnly handed me this thing back then

some kind of super nano phone case

I’m shooting this review segment right here

Chubais (Anatoly Chubais, Russian businessman and former state official) just gave me this

little box. I hadn’t forgotten about it—I put money into

some venture, and then when it turned out that

there was nothing there, no tablets of any kind, we

pulled all the documents and saw that

they had poured in 23 billion rubles (about hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars) and

the result was zero

zero—and they just forgot about it all, they wrote it all off

They just do it exactly like in that

scene from *Men in Black*, where they do that thing and then

everyone forgets, and after that they don’t

tell us anything anymore—not about the tablet, not a word

about the super nano case, let alone all

the rest—that Rusnano is a fake and there’s

no real nanotechnology there, none at all, it’s just

an endless manipulation of

reporting, and stories about supposedly

existing products that nobody has ever

actually seen, or things like the drug

Kagocel, which has officially been recognized

as the same kind of fake, and it never

went through the proper procedures—double

blind testing and verification—so it’s not

really a medicine at all, just a fake, that’s all

But when you say that you can’t do this

that they’re thieves, they say, “Oh Lord, my God,”

“how much longer must we endure this

aggressive anti-bourgeois rhetoric?”

“After all, we’re such bourgeois people here, just look,”

“I mean, Anatoly Chubais is practically like Volochkova (Anastasia Volochkova, Russian ballerina and media personality),

performing here in a very bourgeois style,”

“and you with your aggressive left-wing rhetoric—if

you don’t like something, pack up and

get out of the country.” But we are not

going anywhere, and we’re not even going away from this

program. We’ll see you

next Thursday for sure

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