Arashukov’s so-called sworn brother, the poisoning of children in Moscow, and the segment: “They’ve lost their minds”

[music]

Hello everyone. It's 8 p.m. in Moscow, and we're live

on the air with the program *Russia of the Future*, and I am

Alexei Navalny, or a beauty blogger, as

my beloved TV channel Tsargrad called me,

the Tsargrad TV channel

or, as I was also nicknamed this

week, a man facing a penal colony

for insulting an official. I don't know

whether I really am facing prison or not,

but I will go on insulting these officials

because I really don't like them at all.

Let's insult them together today,

just a little, on this program.

Please write to me on Twitter with

the hashtag #RussiaOfTheFuture — your questions, and I

will try to answer some of them.

And I'll start right away with this: tomorrow I'm going to

St. Petersburg. On Saturday I'll be speaking there.

I'll be supporting our big — well, not our,

but St. Petersburg's —

their big campaign, because even though

St. Petersburg isn't my hometown, it is a city I love,

and I don't want United Russia

to control everything there. This fall there will be

elections.

1,575 municipal deputies will be elected.

Right now, United Russia controls 90

percent of the deputy seats there, and

people from St. Petersburg keep correcting me: not 'Peter folks,' but 'Petersburgers,'

and they say no, it's 99 percent if you count

the supposedly independent candidates who are actually under their control.

And now, as you can see

at this link, more than 2,000 people have already signed up

who want

to take part in this election race,

to fight for seats. And many more

have signed up who want to

support these candidates. This absolutely must be done,

even if you don't live in

St. Petersburg, even if you've never been there,

even if maybe you don't like

St. Petersburg because of its rather unusual weather.

Even so, this city still needs

support, because United Russia and

the man who wants to become governor

of St. Petersburg, Beglov, are far worse

than any St. Petersburg weather. They're just

disgusting, revolting,

very strange, very stupid people. In

the last program I told you a funny

story about how this very same Beglov,

who wants to become

governor — a United Russia member — came to a

session of the Legislative Assembly.

One of the deputies, Maxim Reznik, said

to him,

'Well, you know, you're not right for our

city.' And this guy just jumped up and

ran away. And then he got revenge on Reznik — the story

developed this week, and it was simply

magnificent. So this would-be governor

ran out of the Legislative Assembly and

decided he had to do something bad

to Reznik. Then he met with

veterans and was telling them about

the anniversary of the Siege of Leningrad (the WWII blockade of the city).

And he says, 'You know, there is this

deputy,

Reznik, in St. Petersburg...' And when I

listened to this recording myself, I thought, well, now he's going to

say something like, 'He insulted me,' or 'He

treated me disrespectfully, so I'll

have him jailed for insulting state

authorities,' or something like that — that he'd say something

bad about his opponent,

Reznik. But what Beglov said was that this

man wants to hand the city over to the fascists.

Let's listen to 28 seconds of this gem.

Just the other day, many were saying we should...

Today again, one of the deputies there,

Reznik, spoke and said that we should have

surrendered the city to the fascists. But I

answered him at the government meeting: the fascists

— and in Europe at that time there were democracies...

Excuse me, I won't name

the countries that stood here and surrounded

our city... some 23...

Well, you see, they're both idiots and crooks.

Spectacularly so. Of course, you come

to veterans on a day of remembrance for them

and tell them something — and veterans probably

don't use the internet; many of them

haven't watched my program and don't know

what really happened. So you just

make things up: 'There's this

opposition fruitcake, and he wants to hand

the city over to the fascists.' Naturally, the veterans

clutch their hearts and say, 'My God, how

can there be people like that today?' But let Beglov

keep it up. I'll come to St. Petersburg, and he

can go speak somewhere and say that

this Navalny came and said that all

veterans should be shot,

or that all children should be eaten, and they

will keep repeating it right up until the election

without the slightest doubt, without the slightest

scruple. That's why these people

need to be thrown out of their deputy seats. In

St. Petersburg, United Russia is not supported,

so Petersburgers, take part; and those who aren't

Petersburgers, support them. I'll be in

St. Petersburg on Saturday. Next, of course, I

would like to discuss with you the astonishing

main story that happened this

week — this story about the sworn

brother.

For the last two days, since yesterday

evening — well, since yesterday, it seems —

Senator Arashukov (a Russian senator at the center of a major scandal) — this kind of

outcast whom everyone suddenly

turned away from. But three days ago — wow — he was

a star. He was simply the best

man; everyone adored him. Ramzan

Kadyrov

wrote posts about him, calling him

his brother — his sworn brother. He was adored by

show business stars who fawned all over him.

This Arashukov guy always had people on his

lap: Tina Kandelaki would be sitting on one knee,

and on the other knee sat Nikolai

Baskov.

On his third knee, so to speak, sat

Federation Council Chair Valentina Matviyenko.

And so on and so forth — everyone orbited around him

because he was very rich, because

he was a billionaire, and all of that was great.

And everyone wanted to get some

money out of him. United Russia (the ruling political party) adored him because

on the fourth knee of this

same Arashukov sat the head of

United Russia’s executive committee, Turchak — yes, that very

Turchak whom law enforcement agencies

were accusing of ordering a murder. And with

this Arashukov, everything was going great — he

was presented as this very classy,

respectable man, a member of the Federation Council (Russia’s upper house of parliament).

And whatever the Federation Council may be lying about now,

I’ll tell you about it: they went to bat

for this Arashukov however they could, and

kept saying what a wonderful man he was. And then suddenly

— bang — some investigators showed up.

The prosecutor general himself, Chaika, had him stripped of

his parliamentary powers, and it turned out that

his so-called sworn brother was no brother at all,

but quite the opposite — some kind of sworn

enemy.

And one of the most amazing things

that gave me enormous

pleasure was watching how quickly

all this riffraff that used to love Arashukov,

that had posed for photos with him — all

these United Russia people, propagandists, and entertainers —

all this crowd — how fast they

ran away from him.

United Russia expelled him from

its ranks almost instantly. Tina

Kandelaki, meanwhile, gave everyone a good laugh

because she wrote something like,

“I barely know Arashukov at all,”

“I only did a little running and exercise with him,”

“that’s all.”

Not just “did some running” — on a

treadmill. Well, naturally, people

went digging through Twitter and found a large

number of photos that we all

had a good laugh over. Those “treadmill photos,”

let’s just say, showed her calling him none other than

“the youngest and most handsome governor,” and

then suddenly — no “young, handsome

governor,” just, you know, “we ran on a

treadmill.” And my personal prize in the

category of “changing shoes mid-air” goes to

Ramzan Kadyrov, who wrote

about him, as I already said, “brother” and

“sworn brother.”

Go to Kadyrov’s Instagram right now,

and do you know what you’ll see in place of all

those photos saying “my dear sworn

brother Ara(shukov) came to visit me...” — well,

forget it. What you’ll find there instead is

a notice saying, “Sorry,”

“Oops, content not found. The user

deleted these photos.” In other words, Ramzan

Kadyrov, who had this so-called sworn

brother, just went ahead and deleted him. The posts remain on Twitter,

yes — he wrote something there, posted replies,

photos and all that — but on Instagram

there is absolutely nothing left anymore,

not a trace of any “sworn”

brother. The Federation Council

has completely fallen out of love with our golden boy.

And I want to point out, to remind you of

— really, more to tell you, because

everyone ignored this important fact.

I even checked, and almost

no media outlet wrote about it at all.

The Investigative Committee says this

Arashukov — can you imagine what a scoundrel — has

a residence permit in the

United Arab Emirates and

some real estate there. But do you know that in

2017 Arashukov was already accused — you

can find it if you dig around,

just google it; right now there are a million

pages about his arrest — but

if you scroll back, keep scrolling back, you’ll

find it.

He was accused back then of having

property abroad. And what was Valentina

Matviyenko saying then? She was saying, yes,

yes, yes, that regardless of

rank, we must

fight wrongdoing everywhere, of course.

And yet they took this Arashukov by the arm,

and back then the Federation Council

was tearing its shirt off its chest defending him,

saying it was all lies, that there was nothing to it.

The Federation Council’s website

denied the accusations, because back then

he was still such a great guy.

Back then he was taking that stolen money from

Gazprom and handing it out, and everyone

loved him. Everything was wonderful, amazing,

just fantastic.

Someone told us today that this

Arashukov used to invite to his estate in

Karachay-Cherkessia (a republic in southern Russia) some absolutely remarkable

people. For example, the head of the Investigative

Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, was

a regular guest. There are very funny

photos of him in a red shirt

hanging out with these Arashukovs

at their estate in Karachay-Cherkessia.

And interestingly, I wrote about this today

on Twitter and, well,

I tagged the Investigative Committee’s Twitter account

like, “Guys, please give an

official comment.” I thought they would

say it was false rumors,

that it wasn’t confirmed, that nothing like that happened.

No — they’re just silent. They’re pretending

nothing happened. And apparently after some

time Bastrykin will tell us, “Well yes,”

“I visited the estate more than once.” One version

claims he was there all the time.

I had been there many times, but that was

for operational work.

You know, while working there, essentially undercover.

I went there, they fed me shashlik (grilled meat skewers), and yes, I ate it

without any pleasure. That is, here we were

pouring me red wine, white wine, and vodka,

and taking me to the banya (Russian steam bath), but it was disgusting to me.

Every second while I was eating shashlik, steaming myself

in the banya,

riding horses and staying at

that damn estate, bought with who knows

what money, I felt utterly disgusted.

The head of the Investigative

Committee should tell us. In general, it’s interesting how this

works: this senator has

an official income of 5 million rubles (about tens of thousands of U.S. dollars) and yet

he, together with his daddy, there

and nephews, as law enforcement is now telling us,

stole 30

billion rubles, and they’re showing some

sabers and gold bars in the photographs.

He went there regularly, he saw those

sabers.

He saw those gold bars, but apparently

he was staying there, in a place that

was built by a senator, a public official, and his

daddy, an employee of the state-owned

Gazprom. Somehow he didn’t realize then

that they were living beyond their means when

he was visiting them for several years. Arashukov,

is accused of two murders

at least two. I’ve already seen reports in

some media outlets mentioning five murders.

And meanwhile, everything was supposedly fine: we went there and ate

little shashliks with murderers, everything was great,

everything was normal. Then something happened there,

he had a falling-out with someone, he got arrested, but we’ll

just forget about that, let’s not

discuss why the head of the

Investigative Committee of Russia

was hanging out with this—well, with these Arashukovs.

He was there. It’s the same story

as Prosecutor General Chaika and those same Tsapki (the notorious Kushchyovskaya gang) that

we talked about in our film *Chaika*.

They used to come there—the prosecutors, I mean.

They, their wives, their children, all came to these

Tsapki, did business with them, provided them protection.

They were killing people, and when they killed

too many people, it turned out that

there was a scandal, the Tsapki were jailed or

killed off somewhere in their cells so they wouldn’t

start talking, while the prosecutors all

remained in place. And here too, somehow, still

you’d like there to be at least a little

investigation into what grounds there were for the

friendship between the head of the

Investigative Committee and a family that

killed people and stole billions from

Gazprom. For those who have been following

my work for a long time, you probably

remember that probably my first really

high-profile investigation was precisely about

Mezhregion

Gaz—Gazprom’s structure. In general,

Gazprom consists of two big parts.

There’s the transportation side, there’s the part

that exports abroad, and there’s

Mezhregiongaz, which handles gas inside Russia.

If you pay for gas, then ultimately

you are paying Mezhregiongaz.

Mezhregiongaz is a huge structure that

supplies gas to consumers within

Russia, and it’s full of thieves, one worse than the next.

I drew diagrams, I wrote

crime reports about Parashukov—to you, by the way,

dear Alexander Ivanovich

Bastrykin, expect my application for

recognition as a victim. After all, I’m a Gazprom shareholder,

I’ve got a couple of shares there.

Let them recognize me as a victim if these

Arashukovs stole 30 billion rubles.

Okay, fine, recognize me

as a victim too—otherwise what, once again it all just disappears?

Everything goes off somewhere unknown, just like that.

So, I also

this was the seventh—well, something like that—

10 years ago I filed a report, I was there

shouting, making a scandal, saying that in

this whole mess I had laid out all the

transit schemes, the schemes by which they

steal both money and gas, and sell the gas for

money, and so on. Nothing happened.

Nothing happened. And if, in a normal state, these people—

if my reports in a normal state

had been reviewed

and all the evidence I found

and presented had been examined, then there would have been no

30 billion rubles stolen by anyone.

The 30 billion rubles they stole over recent

years could have been saved, but that did not

happen. And why didn’t it happen? Because

all this theft at Gazprom, all these schemes,

are overseen by whom? Putin, Vladimir Vladimirovich.

Yes, now something has happened, these

Arashukovs have been chosen to be devoured, but

excuse me, let’s just

just imagine something like this.

A person is appointed by the Federation Council, right? They

are always said to conduct

some kind of FSB checks,

biography analysis, security clearance,

a huge number of various special services are involved, and yet

now let’s imagine that you and I are the FSB, and

Arashukov’s biography lands on our desk.

They want, that is,

to appoint him to the Federation Council—he’ll be the youngest senator.

I’m some kind of FSB captain,

and you, my viewer, are an FSB general, and I tell you:

listen, here, I’m giving you this

report on Arashukov: he did not receive a secondary

education, did not finish school, but at 16

years old, before reaching adulthood, he began working at

the company Stavropol

Regiongaz. And you tell me—don’t tell me

that this is somehow possible. Fine,

fine, he started his work biography at 16,

so he was already working somewhere, and by 18

I’m telling you, he became a deputy.

the City Assembly of Stavropol, not a single one of you

gives a straight answer. No, no, tell me, what kind of

lawlessness is this? He stole, of course he did. Give it back.

He bought a mandate in Stavropol; at 18 he became

a deputy. What nonsense is this? And you say, well,

that was still somehow normal. Then, at 22, he

became a minister in the republic of

Karachayevo-Cherkessia (a republic in Russia’s North Caucasus).

How could that happen? Let me remind you: he did not

finish school, did not finish school, and at 22

he became a minister, my dear Lieutenant General,

Lieutenant General,

and you answer me, well, you know,

what does it take, what do you need in order

to become a minister? Well, apparently,

his father over at Mezhregiongaz

brought in four suitcases of cash, and they appointed

the guy minister. Then he became an aide to the

president of the republic. For me, this is

a separate and rather interesting thing. Remember

when I was barred from the election?

the presidential one. There was this Boris and

Ebzeyev, a member of the election commission,

who read out a report saying that, basically,

Navalny must not be allowed to run in the election,

because he is a criminal. Well, this very

same man

Arashukov was an aide to that Ebzeyev,

that very Ebzeyev who was explaining

that people like me must not be allowed into power.

He was the one delivering the report, because I was supposedly the bad one.

So, for them, a 22-year-old minister and his

aide without even a secondary education

who later, it turned out, killed people

and stole billions, moved along perfectly well

up the ladder. For Ebzeyev, for

the election commission, for that whole

power structure, it was all okay, more or less.

As for this criminal crowd, moving on: he

worked for several years in various

positions, and at 30 he became a senator.

And there were regularly all sorts of

scandals around him. They found a residence permit for him in the

United Arab Emirates.

And in the Emirates, a criminal case was opened

against him on charges of

document forgery.

All of this was back in 2017, and they were telling

us from every federal platform that everything was

just fine, and all those Kremlin tower insiders

were saying, yes, yes, everything is normal. And Turchak

liked him, and Kadyrov called him

his brother, and everything, everything was just fine.

Listen, even now things are still

relatively okay for him, because, well,

the whole staging of his arrest was so

different from the arrest of any other person. I mean,

I myself have been put under arrest many times.

When they take me to court, or to the Moscow City Court,

this is what it looks like, I know what it looks like: you are

led in handcuffs, restrained, and next to you

there is a police officer cuffed to you. Here, you

can see it in this photo: you are sitting there

all wrapped up in chains.

That’s how it is.

Even in an administrative case, they put me on a

bench, but there are huge numbers of

police officers around me on all sides.

And in the previous program, and in

this one too, I’ll say it again: it is awful, and

the situation is only getting worse. Shevchenko

from Open Russia was arrested in

Rostov-on-Don simply for taking part in

organizing a debate.

They put him not in a cage, but in a glass dock,

locked him in there.

Police were standing all around. But how did they

arrest our Arashukov? Let’s

take a look. I have literally never seen anything like it.

Just look.

You are accused of a double

murder, and yet you sit there calmly, and there is

no convoy pointing

automatic weapons at you, you are not in a cage,

you are not in a glass dock, you are simply sitting there

together with your lawyers. How is that

even possible? It looks like a civil

proceeding.

I am against cages, I am against those glass docks.

I think that whole thing is idiotic.

But excuse me,

if you drag any person away in handcuffs for a one-person

picket just so that

you can lock them up for 10 days, while this man

killed two people—you yourselves say he killed two

people—and still he sits there perfectly comfortably. Well then,

presumably he is sitting there comfortably because

Alexander Ivanovich Bastrykin

used to visit his country house, because for many

years everything about him was perfectly clear. But this gentleman

without a higher education became

a minister. In other words, they were stealing from

Gazprom

enormous amounts of money through a very simple

scheme. Volkov, on our channel, talked about

such schemes on his program

in Chechnya

and across the entire North Caucasus. These

regional crooks operating in

Mezhregiongaz invent

fake gas consumers; gas is shipped to them

on paper, and then they sell it at some kind of

transfer price and make money. Roughly

speaking,

they steal gas and then sell it on to

consumers, making

billions from it. And with those billions they

entertain all the officials, bring

celebrities to their parties, and lead this very active

high-society life. And everyone loves them, as

we can see, despite all these

arrests. And the degree of affection for this

murderer and super-thief of enormous

amounts of money is incomparably greater than for

someone holding a solitary

picket, because he is sitting there exactly as

a person should sit during a trial, after all,

since there has not even been a court verdict yet.

You haven’t been found guilty, yet you’re locked up for this.

Hold a one-person protest picket, and you’ll end up there.

They’ll shackle you hand and foot, and that’ll be that.

A bailiff will be standing around you, yelling,

no talking.

And all that sort of thing. I’m very interested in how

events are going to unfold, and how

As I already said, I’m going to file a motion stating

that I should be recognized as a victim.

We’ll see, of course, how Gazprom and

the Investigative Committee

will twist themselves into knots trying to prove that I

cannot be considered a victim in the case. After all,

I’m a Gazprom shareholder, and everywhere they write

that when something is stolen from Gazprom, the shareholders

are the victims. Logical enough. We’ll see. But

since I’ve already started talking about various

citizenships and so on, we’re very

interested in watching how the situation develops

with Brilev. I’ve said many times that

it seemed we had them cornered, because he

confirmed his

British citizenship, and accordingly

the key point was that he

served on the public councils of the Defense Ministry

and the Interior Ministry, two of the most secretive state bodies. That’s

simply impossible. And then

the Defense Ministry and the Interior Ministry replied to us:

no violation of the law, no, nothing of the sort.

No legal violation at all, nothing whatsoever.

Nothing serious. The review found no other

citizenship—even though Brilev himself said he had it.

The Interior Ministry also tells us there was

no

violation at all. In other words,

Brilev himself says, “Guys, yes,

I have British citizenship,” and everyone

acknowledges it. Peskov came out and said,

yes, he has British citizenship, but he’s a super-patriot.

Everyone admitted it, and only the ministries

of Defense and Internal Affairs simply

say: there was nothing of the kind. We

believe—well, we believe there wasn’t. And

why? Because go to hell, that’s why.

That’s why. And with Arashukov it’ll be

the same. I won’t even be surprised if

they hush this case up too, because, well,

judging by the whole staging of his arrest,

it all looked as though

they were hauling off someone who had stolen billions

somewhere.

And then somehow, somehow, they’ll patch it all up.

Shevchenko.

I see people asking me, “Alexei, what do you

think about the arrest of Anastasia Shevchenko?”

Quite a few questions have come in about this, and

well, on the previous program I already said

that it was monstrous lawlessness, and so on.

But what happened today is, of course,

something absolutely beyond the pale,

a total tragedy. It’s very hard to talk about.

And Anastasia Shevchenko is, in a way, someone close to us too.

She worked at

Open Russia, but she also helped us.

She wanted to head our campaign штаб (campaign office), but then she ended up

going with Open Russia after all. You remember that

a criminal case was opened against her

simply because she was a member of

Open Russia, which had been declared

an “undesirable organization,” and she

was arrested—first placed in a pretrial detention center (SIZO), then

put under house arrest because

she had supposedly been engaged in political activity. And

that “activity” consisted of

organizing some debates somewhere.

That is, she wasn’t even organizing rallies. I

saw people online writing that, well, Shevchenko

was supposedly being punished fairly because she had organized protests.

She didn’t even organize protests.

She has three children. She has a daughter with

developmental disabilities.

One of her daughters was seriously ill. Shevchenko

begged the judge to allow her to visit her daughter

because the girl was sick. She was asking—

she said: you’re keeping me

under house arrest, but I have a sick

child. She’s in a boarding facility; I need

to visit her. I want to go see her. I want

to walk my son to school. And the judge,

that bastard,

said no. And today, Shevchenko’s daughter

died. That’s why this section

of the program is called “The Murder of Alina

Shevchenko,” because they killed her.

She was a sick child.

She died of bronchitis, apparently.

A child was ill—can you imagine

what it means for a sick child to be there, sick,

dying, and to die without her mother? Maybe

if her mother had been allowed to come to her,

and the judge only allowed it at the very last moment—

that is, she arrived literally

in the final hours, or maybe minutes.

They would not let her come. They would not

let her visit. We all know perfectly well

how important it is for any person, especially for

a child’s recovery,

to have support, the closeness of family,

the closeness of a mother. What kind of

monsters jailed Shevchenko for

participating in an organization,

for organizing debates, and would not allow her

to see her sick child—and the child

died. They all need to be arrested

immediately: that idiot judge—or idiots,

that fascist prosecutor, and all the rest of that

center—I don’t even know who exactly

was behind opening these criminal cases. They

really did kill a child. There’s no other

way to put it. It’s simply indescribable.

Even if they opened their bogus case,

they could at least have imposed a travel restriction instead. How can you

not have at least something human

left in you? They told you: come on,

we need another solved-case tally, we need the statistics. Fine, you need your numbers,

in Rostov Region (in southern Russia),

you opened a criminal case,

so then at least leave her under a travel restriction.

under a travel restriction in this criminal case, if that's the way to put it

what matters is the statistics

No, you have to step in and

say, "Oh, you're a mother of three children, well then"

something like, "you get special treatment"

because of the children, because your child is sick there

dying, and you're not allowed to go to them—sit at home

you should have thought earlier, before you

joined the organization, I mean

and these people in our wonderful Russia

of the future, they of course must face

severe punishment, otherwise it can't be done—in any

normal system, I don't know, somehow

any people who come to power

will have to do something about this, because

it's the dehumanization of society, simply

such a thing

and the brutalization of Russia, when we see it and

nothing happens—the prosecutor's office doesn't even

apologize, no criminal case is opened

we don't find any apologies or anything of the sort

no one offered any, no one repented or stepped down

from office—no, as if that's exactly how it should be, as if

as if that's exactly how it should be. All these people must

be punished. So, our next topic

I'm answering a question about—our next topic is

Kostya Bronshtein asks, what is happening

in kindergartens? I'll tell you everything

about it. The next topic is kindergartens

Sergey Golubev. Alexei, Sergey Golubev

asks: Alexei, do you connect the mass

evacuations in St. Petersburg with the upcoming

elections and the actions you're

launching? To be honest, I don't know anything

about the evacuations in St. Petersburg. When I get to the city,

maybe I'll learn something, but we aren't organizing any

specific actions. We're preparing for the elections and

we're getting ready to take part in them, and

right now we're gathering candidates, so in that

sense there are no actions for now. So, about

Andrei asks for a few words about

the registration of all phones in Russia from May 1

—does that really mean all phone-related rights

go to the punitive authorities?

can, without any formalities and without explanation,

seize them under the law, as they see fit

There really has been some very

stupid bill introduced saying that in order

to protect a mobile phone from theft,

you will have to register every mobile

device you own

—that is, if you have, I don't know,

an iron with a mobile

module, or any kind of gadget

or a car alarm with a SIM card in it, then you

will have to register it somehow

through some special procedure. I don't know—I hope this

simply super-idiotic law will not

be passed, although in general it is perceived

as just another idiotic law. If it is passed,

it really will be a gigantic

money-making scheme, a huge scandal, and simply

a burden for ordinary people. Say you go out now

and buy a phone—then you'll have to

register it, and pay for the registration. If you

have a tablet, or as technology

develops, naturally

SIM cards and connectivity

will be everywhere—even in a cup, soon enough

—not to mention any household

appliances, and all of that will have to be

registered. In other words, in Russia

once again

the authorities are, for some reason, making life harder

for citizens. So, "American Spy"

asks: is it time to organize a trade union

for pensioners?

I'm ready to take the most active part in

creating it. Dear American Spy,

we'll look into it, but a pensioners' trade union

—a real trade union, not an organization called

a trade union, but an actual trade union—

somewhat contradicts the very idea of a trade union

because a trade union is made up of working

people. With all due respect to pensioners, they

have worked a lot, but in terms of trade-union

organization

we'd need to study the issue

So, a real emergency happened in Moscow, and I

want to talk a little about

the fantastic ability of the Moscow

authorities and Sergey Semyonovich Sobyanin

to cover up emergencies, because, well, I didn't expect

it. What they did was simply

criminal, but from the standpoint of control

over the media, you just have to tip your

hat to them, because in Moscow there was a

mass poisoning of children, and on

this very screen standing here

starting from the end of December, and then in January

when I started hosting the program and in the blog

people wrote to me, sent emails, kept writing

"Alexei,

please write something, say something, because

in the southeast, where you're from, in your

Maryino

there's mass poisoning of children—they're coming down with dysentery

and being hospitalized with fevers of 40–42°C

they're ending up in hospitals, literally near death. This is a

mass poisoning

there are test results proving dysentery

then the outpatient clinics stopped giving

parents the test results to take home, and this is hundreds

of children, a large number of kindergartens, and

it needs to be investigated. People are asking, and I

google it and search and search, and there's nothing. On VKontakte (a Russian social network)

it's full of messages: "We are the mothers from such-and-such

kindergarten, our children were poisoned," and "We are

from this other kindergarten"

and "I'm in the hospital with my child." It's full—

a huge number of forums are full of it, but the media

are silent

online media, newspapers—there in Maryino

one newspaper wrote about it and was silenced

some small newspapers wrote about it, but overall

it isn't being discussed, and

that's astonishing

when hundreds of children have been poisoned in

in Moscow, where there are such scandal-ridden people

where people with mobile phones live

the internet, laptops, and where any information

is absolutely impossible to hide in Moscow

was completely hushed up

and in some sense, thanks to Lyubov

Sobol, who released

an investigation on this topic today, I somehow for myself

also closed the loop on this issue, so to speak

people were making claims against me

for staying silent, and I felt some kind of

guilt, because, well, who besides me

is going to say this to a more or less large audience

of several hundred thousand people? Everyone else

is afraid. Sobyanin has either swallowed them all up or

bought them off. Let's watch 1 minute and 12

seconds

a short excerpt from Lyubov's report, from her

investigation. You can

watch it on our channel. I very

strongly recommend everyone watch it. Let's roll 1

minute and 12 seconds

I am standing outside the kindergarten attached to School

No. 1200 in Novokosino

On December 7, an emergency occurred here: an outbreak

of dysentery among the children. The kindergarten was closed for

quarantine, and Rospotrebnadzor (Russia’s consumer safety watchdog) launched an inspection

Later, the inspection established that the children

had been infected with

an infectious disease, shigellosis

In this kindergarten alone, 23

people were affected

Then similar cases began occurring

in other kindergartens as well. Then we learned that

our kindergarten was not the first to be infected. It turns out

the entire southeastern district was affected. More than

10 kindergartens appeared to be infected. According to

state contract data, food services

in the kindergartens where the dysentery outbreaks occurred

were handled by two companies: the food supplier

Concord and VITO-1. Both suppliers are part of

the Association of Social Catering Enterprises

in the fields of education and

healthcare. Even if the contract

was signed with one company

sometimes the work was carried out by the other, acting as

a subcontractor. And until recently

the association’s general director was Dmitry

Tikhonov

At the same time, he is the deputy general director of

Concord

which belongs to Yevgeny Prigozhin

who is known as “Putin’s chef”

28,000 people are watching my

live stream right now, and a significant number of them

are from Moscow. Guys, I hope you

pay attention to this, because, well,

we need to break through the information blockade

that Sobyanin has organized so effectively. I mean,

no governor anywhere else could have managed

to do this: hundreds of children are infected

and he has not said a word. Not only has he not

said a word, not a single senior

official in the Moscow city government

the head of the health department

is silent, the deputy mayor

overseeing healthcare is silent, everyone

is silent. It’s just astonishing. They

must answer for this, because as you know from

our investigations—and simply because so much has been written about it—

this very “Putin’s chef,”

Prigozhin, who now everywhere is this kind of

trusted man for Putin

an absolute gangster, who now

is sending mercenaries somewhere and

building military compounds—we have done investigations

about this. He is completely unafraid

to attack people. Lyubov Sobol

whom you just saw, who basically

specializes in Prigozhin

released the investigation, but her husband was attacked

near their apartment entrance, and then Novaya

immediately said it was Prigozhin. Novaya

Gazeta published an investigation, and one of the

people involved there simply admits

yes, we did it. And for many years now he has had the exclusive right

to supply

food to Moscow schools and

kindergartens, and there have been many

scandals and disputes over this. But here he simply

poisoned hundreds of children, and not just

a little—dysentery is a dangerous

disease. Fortunately, no one died, and

now Sobol has simply gathered all the

evidence and interviewed

dozens of mothers from nine kindergartens. There are simply

clinically confirmed diagnoses there

with all the test results, because

afterward, Moscow outpatient clinics

stopped giving us

the mothers of these children, the parents, and even

issuing these test results to us, because

they realized that now everyone would start

shaking them down, and Sobol is now even planning

to file a class-action lawsuit, because they

must pay—both Prigozhin and Sobyanin

must pay. But remember, on New

Year’s, a walkway collapsed where

there in Gorky Park (a famous Moscow park), and do we have

the video of the bridge collapsing? If so, let’s

show it; if not, we won’t. Well, you saw it

it was quite an unpleasant thing. People

had gathered, some fell, and Moscow City Hall

said that to every injured person we

will pay 500,000 rubles (about several thousand U.S. dollars). That was the right

thing to do, absolutely the right thing, because you

built such a bridge with your clumsy hands

that it failed under people’s weight. People on

New Year’s fell, some broke bones

so let them pay here too. So I

believe that the mayor of Moscow, first of all, must

come out and explain himself. Second, he must

finally say something about

why the hell one person

controls the supply

of all food to all schools and all

kindergartens, and admit that they poisoned

the children. This is a shared responsibility

The responsibility lies with both Prigozhin and

the Department of Health and

the Department of Education, as well as the personal

political responsibility as well. Let them consistently

pay, let them pay compensation, just as

this has led to

it should be abroad—if this were a mother

who, instead of going to work, had to travel

and do something, dragging a small child, a preschool

child, to the hospital, not with

a temperature of 41°C (105.8°F), and she was completely

horrified there—well then, they need to pay

and they must be forced to pay so that next

time Prigozhin or other

food suppliers

are afraid, so they know they’ll be ruined

by insurance companies, by lawyers like

Sobol, or by these mothers themselves, who will ruin them

with their lawsuits, because they have to pay.

If you poisoned a child, you pay a million. Of course,

you can’t rule out a situation where, you know,

some refrigerator broke somewhere,

some force majeure.

Or some minor issue—say, one

child was poisoned, or two.

But when there are

dozens or hundreds across southeastern Moscow, well,

that means the contract must be

terminated.

You must pay for this—pay each

of these mothers. I hope every one of them

will pursue this, and the first step toward

achieving that is simply to make sure

everyone knows about it and that everyone demands from Sobyanin

answers.

Answers to these questions—the mayor of the city cannot

ignore all of this, and

this ignoring simply looks

offensive. Although, of course, simply

shutting everyone up has worked for them

fantastically. Today I published

an investigation, I wrote a couple of

tweets, and I’ve never seen this many of these

Kremlin trolls before. I mean,

I understand that Prigozhin owns

that very troll factory, and I really appreciated

that it really is a factory: you write

something bad about Prigozhin, and immediately

in the first few minutes there are thirty comments

saying that this has nothing to do

with what’s being alleged, that you have

no evidence, that these aren’t the right tests, that all of it

is nonsense. In other words, there is literally a machine at work

for silencing everyone on the internet. It would seem that on

the internet you can’t really silence people that much, but

nevertheless Sobyanin managed it.

Let’s break this situation. They must

answer.

They must pay, and we must do

something so that situations like this do not

happen again, because poisoning hundreds of

children is an emergency of federal scale.

They should be talking about this on Channel One (Russia’s main state TV channel).

Let’s have more questions. General Sher,

I’m being asked: in the State Duma they said that

Russia could be cut off from the internet—if

there is such a possibility. Well, of course there is such

a possibility. Look, they regularly

do this in regions where things are happening—in the Caucasus,

they’re quite fond of it. When there were

those protests in Ingushetia over handing over part of

the territory to Chechnya, they shut down

the internet there for a while. And undoubtedly

Putin is preparing a system to disconnect Russia

from the global internet and switch to what is called

what is known as

Runet—a purely Russian

local network. They are trying to do this,

they are preparing, yes. They are officially allocating

large amounts of money for research into

this issue and for organizing such a

system.

But since they’re pretty ham-fisted

guys, they’re unlikely to be able to implement

it completely, one hundred percent, and

fully cut you off from the internet. But the fact that they

will mess everything up for you

and interfere with your use of the internet is

a fact. And this fact, by the way, about these so-called

siloviki (security and law-enforcement officials),

who are supposedly disconnecting and protecting us, was also reflected in

a great, amazing story this week about how

the National Guard (Rosgvardiya)

lost Crimea.

Returning to that story—of course we’re talking

about that painting, the painting

*Ai-Petri. Crimea*, which was stolen from the Tretyakov Gallery

in broad daylight. A man simply

walked in, took the painting off the wall, and carried it away.

And here we should remember that in 20

17—just look at the empty wall—in 2017

the government, our beloved Medvedev,

issued a special directive saying that

all museums, all museum storage facilities, must

be guarded by Rosgvardiya troops. Doesn’t

that remind you of anything?

It seems familiar.

There was also a directive saying that food for

the National Guard had to be supplied only by

a certain company, which supplied it

at several times the price. Here too we see a field

tilted, but now in favor of the National Guard, so

that they would have a way to make money, so that

they could push out

all sorts of private security companies from

the museum market. Museums receive money for security,

and that security money they are supposed to

hand over exclusively to them.

They were supposed to guard things really well. But after all,

those private guards—what are they, some kind of fools? Whereas we have

actual Rosgvardiya fighters—they surely wouldn’t

let a painting be stolen.

Well, as it turns out, they did steal one from the Tretyakov. Who could

have thought that you could simply walk up,

take a painting off the wall, and carry it away? The man,

the thief—or group of thieves—was found,

but it’s just unbelievable.

Two contracts were signed in 2018.

for a total of 17.5 million rubles

that is, the Tretyakov Gallery

let's say we paid those taxes

the taxes allocated under the culture budget went to

the Tretyakov Gallery, and the Tretyakov Gallery allocated

paid 17 million rubles to the National Guard (Rosgvardiya)

for security, and the National Guard was unable

to organize security even at a level

where, say, at the entrance checkpoint

if a guy walks out carrying a painting under his arm, as

actually happened, someone would ask him

"Hey, why are you carrying a painting? Show me something."

They didn't even think to stop him and listen to an explanation

and then consider: this is the Tretyakov Gallery

and some person is carrying a painting out of

the Tretyakov Gallery — what could possibly

be suspicious about that? Apparently nothing to them.

Not a single thought that something

might be wrong occurred to the National Guard officers

and they just kept

standing there with stern faces. Though maybe

on the other hand, you can't really blame them, because

as we know from our

our

investigation into the National Guard, they are underfed. But in any

case, this simply shows, first of all,

the pointlessness of all this pomp and of what

is being built out of the National Guard. The National Guard

has 350,000 personnel — more than the Turkish

army. It's a gigantic thing that we

pay for, that we are forced to support, and as we

can see, even in museums, what does it do? Well, it's not

clear — it does nothing, and for its own

fighters it pays tiny

salaries because it cheats on

food supplies. You saw here

that wild warrant officer, a former one, now dismissed

a National Guard warrant officer, who spoke about

how they are not given enough food; they

steal on everything. In other words, they created this

army in order to steal from its

maintenance. The bigger it is, the more

there is to steal. The more responsibilities

they pile onto it — museum security,

I don't know, railway station security,

security for absolutely everything in the world — the more

money flows into the budget, and the more can be

stolen. That's exactly what all of this

is set up for, and

that is exactly why they are trying to pass

a law saying that it is forbidden to insult

state authorities — that it will be forbidden

to say that the National Guard

exists in order to steal from it

They want to introduce criminal

liability for that, but I will continue

to say it. What happened was

of course a comical situation, but one that very

clearly shows how these

most aggressive pro-Putin structures

are organized, and how

useless and incompetent they are. And with the internet, they

will block it in much the same way: they

will inconvenience you, you will pay more money,

but they are unlikely to shut it down completely.

"From Mordor with Love" asks me:

"Alexei, don't you think the poisoning

of children in Moscow is a way of intimidating

the population?" No, of course I don't

think so. If they wanted to intimidate people that way,

first of all, it would backfire

against them; second, they would have made sure people knew

about it, someone would have publicized it. In fact,

they are suppressing this information; they

forbid doctors from talking about it; they

forbid doctors from issuing a diagnosis of

dysentery, and even from giving out

test results to parents. The union —

there were many questions about how

our Navalny union is developing.

Listen, the Navalny union has won.

Well, at least from what I've seen over a week of our

work, the result is absolutely amazing,

because as soon as we announced that

we were launching this kind of trade union

movement and would support any other

unions as well, but first and foremost we

are now focusing on public-sector workers, and we demand

that they be paid exactly the salary

that Putin promised twice during his

election campaigns, in 2012 and 2018. After that,

Peskov was asked about our

initiative and said, well yes, we

support public oversight too, and

in that sense our idea worked. I already

said in this program and in my video

that the authorities cannot, when we

corner them with information showing that

a hospital orderly somewhere is getting 15,000

rubles

instead of 28,000, say that

that's how it should be, because everywhere they have reported

that an orderly gets 28,000. Fine,

Peskov — in other words, they cannot criticize

our initiative because

from a political point of view, well, first of all,

they have supposedly fulfilled everything, so I should have nothing

to monitor. In theory, I should be able to walk into

any hospital or any school

and teachers and doctors should tell me to get lost

because they are already being paid high

salaries. In this theoretical

Kremlin construct, they believe in it themselves, they

talk about it. Fine, and even Putin himself —

let me show you today

a video of how he

talks to the education minister and

repeats four times: keep an eye on

salaries, keep an eye on salaries. Why do you

think he says that? Well, because

because

he wants to cut the ground out from under our feet.

Okay, Vladimir Vladimirovich,

go ahead.

As I already said, the goal of our project

is for teachers to be paid the promised

salary. Pay it and pull the rug out from under us — then we

will be left with nothing, and you can laugh at us.

Let's watch this short clip.

Putin and Vasilyeva, the Minister of Education,

you heard it: teachers' salaries should not—keep an eye on

the level of salaries, and that is what we will judge by.

We will monitor this, and you should monitor salary levels too.

We will keep watching.

What was said specifically was that a teacher's salary

must be no lower than the average salary

across the regional economy.

Dear teachers—or if you know a teacher—

send them this part of my

program. You just heard Putin say it himself.

If you are a teacher in Moscow and you earn

less than 82,500 rubles,

if you are a teacher in St. Petersburg and earn

less than 59,000,

if you are a teacher in the Moscow Region

and earn less than 48,000, or if

you are a teacher in Yekaterinburg, in Sverdlovsk Region,

and earn less than 37,000,

then go to our union's website

and let's

figure out who these scoundrels are who dare not

carry out Putin's instructions,

Vladimir Vladimirovich's, and the Minister

of Education's, who agreed with him

and said, yes, yes, yes, we are complying,

everything is in order.

What was said was not that we should

put them on a quarter-time contract or

a half-time contract. It was not said that it depends

on teaching hours, homeroom duties,

and, I don't know, whatever else.

It was not said that instead of paying someone 48,000, we pay 21,000.

What was said was: the regional average, and we must pay them

all accordingly. That is what we are going to

defend. We have received many thousands of

appeals.

More than 6,000 so far—a fairly large number.

We are going to have to send on

something like 30,000 complaints on this issue, including mine,

and we will send them. It is a huge amount of work

that we are doing. And not only

through complaints—we will also carry out this kind of public

political work, because it has been said

many times, explained and repeated.

And we want this money

to be paid out.

I am very pleased with how this is going. I very much

welcome those people who are not afraid

and who come forward. I very much welcome those

who are ready to create union

cells in their workplaces right now.

At least among public-sector employees, I

am very grateful to all the politicians who

understand that this is a great initiative and

support it. One minute from Yevgeny

Roizman—thank you very much—

who also spoke on this issue.

He is the mayor of a city, and as you understand,

teachers' and doctors' salaries are precisely

a regional and municipal matter.

So Roizman knows what he is talking about.

You can say, well, Navalny is just

talking on the internet and doesn't know the real situation.

But Roizman definitely knows the situation. One minute—

Yevgeny Roizman.

A few words about Navalny. We started

discussing a project in which Navalny

is proposing that all public-sector workers

primarily teachers, doctors—those

concerned, around six million

people—check their salaries and see how far

those salaries comply with the president's decrees.

This is a very smart move. When people say that

this is

Navalny using public-sector workers for self-promotion,

that is, of course, nonsense, because any

politician should watch and track

all the authorities' failures. He should bring them out

into the open, show them to everyone, and propose his own

solutions. In this case, that is exactly what he

is doing. That is what public

politics is about. It is an absolutely correct,

flawless move.

On top of that, I have met plenty of

public-sector workers whose salaries are 12,000, 14,000, 15,000

rubles—amounts that are impossible to live on.

So on this issue I am completely

on Navalny's side. He did the right thing.

For my part, I will also

monitor public-sector salaries in my

region.

So there you have an elected city mayor telling you

that he meets public-sector workers who

earn 12,000, 13,000, 14,000 rubles, yet in Kremlin

statistics that simply does not exist. And that is why we

are going to keep developing this. I am simply receiving

an unimaginable number of

appeals. Are we ready to help

other unions? Yes, we are. On what

terms? We are ready to help other

unions from other sectors not connected

to the public sector? Yes, with no conditions at all—simply

ready to help, because this help

is needed. Today, for example, there was a development in a situation

that genuinely infuriated me.

A worker came to Moscow. He is an employee

of a factory in the town of—

from the town of Sukhoy Log in

Sverdlovsk Region, and he was holding

a one-person picket on Red Square.

He has the legal right to hold a solo picket,

and he stood there with a simple placard. Rustam

Karelin. It said:

"I work in hazardous production, and my

salary is 25,000 rubles." This is

Sverdlovsk Region.

Now, the average salary in Sverdlovsk

Region

is 37,000 rubles; even local media write

that it is 40,000 rubles. But

Rosstat (Russia's federal statistics agency) says 37,000 rubles. A man

works in hazardous production

and gets 25,000. And what happens? He comes

to Moscow,

and they detain him, bundle him up, drag him away

to the police station, and today he was put on trial.

And it would seem the judge was generally reasonable.

He said, well, it was just a one-person picket,

the man has a real problem,

he’s not a political activist,

he’s a member of the factory’s trade union, and he came out with

what little he could do to make trouble for them.

A man stands there with a one-person picket saying,

“Pay attention to my problem: 25,000 rubles a month

for hazardous work — how is anyone supposed to live on that?”

10,000 rubles in fines — at least they didn’t

arrest him, but they did fine him

half his salary. He works in this hazardous

shop floor, in dangerous industrial conditions.

Just imagine: in Russia, hazardous

production, and this plant, as we understand it,

produces either concrete or cement,

in any case it’s very harmful work.

You breathe that stuff in, and years of your life

are cut short dramatically. So he

demanded higher pay, and the court tells him,

“So, you dared to demand it? Fine, then half

your salary

you’ll hand over to the budget, and then it’ll go

to yet another senator or some other official.”

And of course, I want to say right now:

I’m directly appealing to the trade union at this

plant, to Ares, to Karelin, and to everyone else:

if you need any help from me,

media support or anything else

to help when it comes time

to go after these factory owners who

pay 25,000 rubles for hazardous work,

get in touch. If this were an enterprise

barely hanging on by a thread,

that truly couldn’t afford wages, well, I mean,

you’d still have to demand raises, of course,

but it would be harder — there’s no money.

But this is a thriving enterprise.

There’s plenty of money there. Surely from 25,000 to

50,000

or at least up to the average wage in

Sverdlovsk Region — 40,000 — they could raise it,

for a person working in hazardous

conditions. They could, but they never will.

Not for teachers, not for doctors, not for

factory workers like these, not for steelworkers,

not for miners — not until they start

demand it,

That’s exactly why I say a grassroots movement

for higher wages matters: until you

demand it,

you’ll get nothing. Until you start

doing outreach and information work — well, obviously,

this man came from some remote place,

he probably doesn’t know anyone here,

no journalists, nobody — he stood there alone with his placard.

If you need help, come to me — I’ll support you.

No conditions, absolutely none. I don’t care

what your political views are. I’ll be

happy if you manage to win a wage increase

or better working conditions,

if you achieve something. It’s not for me,

not for the Anti-Corruption Foundation,

not for the party Russia of the Future,

I don’t need or want to impose

any conditions on you.

It’s almost 9 p.m., but I still want to — apparently I’m introducing

a segment called

“They’ve Lost Their Minds,” because things are really heating up.

You see, on the one hand we see people

getting poorer.

They’ve been getting poorer for the fifth year in a row.

Workers are coming and standing on Red Square,

the whole country is seething. On the other hand, we see

this mass insanity among

officials, who have basically started a contest

to see who can make the more hellish

statement, who can insult people the most.

So, in our “They’ve Lost Their Minds” segment,

we have an astonishing lady I’ve been watching for quite a while.

Not exactly following her closely, but still,

it’s Marina Yudenich — a real liar

on the internet, and her job is

to lie.

To spread these false posts — she’s this kind of

petty pro-Putin PR flunky, for quite

a long time now.

It’s unclear what she lives on,

unclear who exactly she even is, but she

heads — you see that lady in the

photos? If you think she’s just

some socialite, no — she

heads the Human Rights Council

of Moscow Region.

She is also an authorized representative of President Putin,

and she

speaking on behalf of the authorities, also

lectures ordinary people. Let’s watch

a few seconds — 15 seconds — of her

saying: “What is it you want there? First

you have to contribute something to the budget, then let’s talk.”

“Let’s take this much from the budget — not enough for life, and

take that away...”

I just couldn’t believe it.

You understand, she’s playing the role of

a toad sitting on a pipeline. She sits there on that

oil pipeline — and not only an oil one — on that

on that

reservoir where the tax money is stored,

or the money from our natural resources, and says:

“Some people have gathered there saying,

well, yes, allocate money for life — after all, we

pay taxes, build roads, do something.”

And she says, “What exactly have you contributed to this budget?”

The audacity is unbelievable, absolutely staggering.

Yes, we have contributed to this budget,

and this budget does not exist in order to

feed people like these half-baked

nobodies. It exists to solve

people’s problems, and nobody authorized

some obscure Marina Yudenich

to lecture us about what we are allowed

to do and what we are not. Another lady also

made a very forceful statement.

We have an official from Altai Krai (a region in Siberia),

Ekaterina Chetnikova, head of the

Department of Youth Policy. That’s that.

That’s it.

Everyone involved in youth policy there needs to be cleared out.

Just disband the whole lot of them, because they’re either

crooks or idiots. That same Olga Glatskikh

was supposed to be working with young people, so...

Answering the question of what teachers are supposed to do

with a salary of 9,000 rubles a month (about $100), 9,000—note

this—once again I remind you:

this is exactly why our trade union is needed, because even

in theory, a teacher cannot be paid 9,000

rubles, right? And when an official

is asked how teachers are supposed to live on a salary

of 9,000, she should say that 9,000

must be some kind of mistake, because there are

the May decrees (Putin’s 2012 executive orders), and no one can be paid

less than the regional average salary. Even in

Altai Krai, I don’t remember the exact figure offhand, but

the average salary there is definitely not 9,000 rubles.

But instead, she says the following:

“Excessive demands are not a good thing.”

“Give me everything at once, even though I’m

nothing special, but I want a Mercedes.”

“People need to be reasonable in everything.” Our

task is to work with young people on this issue.

But if you’re earning 9,000 and say you need more,

what, are you an idiot? Have you lost all sense of proportion?

To me, that sounds like wanting a Mercedes

when you haven’t achieved anything,

and yet you’re demanding a salary of what—15,000? What do you

need to be paid—15 and a half?

What are you trying to buy?

To eat instant noodles not every other day, but every day?

You’ve lost all sense of reality. That’s a lot, apparently.

You have to admit, they simply need to be driven out

with a filthy broom, because if there really is

something we need, it’s

criminal liability for insulting people.

But as for them, they should at the very least

face disciplinary consequences. These people should

resign. They sit on our backs

and then act as if

they personally

dug up the oil, or as if they personally

worked at some factory and then

came out to distribute the money. We come and ask,

and when teachers say, well, 9,000

is a bit too little, add a bit more, they reply:

“You’re losing your sense of proportion.” The staggering

rudeness of this state. The last

story I want to tell is very

funny. Once again, let’s remember the

Central Election Commission. Today I was told

about this Ebzeev,

the one who barred me from the elections, and

it turned out that that same Ara Shokhov

was his assistant in Karachay-Cherkessia.

Last week, this man was stripped of the academic degree tied to the dissertation of

former State Duma deputy

Valery Galchenko. He is one of the key figures

in the Central Election

Commission—that is, one of the people

responsible for rigging,

falsification, lying, and so on,

and so on, and so on. Naturally, like all of them,

his dissertation was fake, and

a fake falsification—a fake

falsification, in fact—his

dissertation really should be called

a fake falsification.

He was stripped of it, though they didn’t want to, and here

the killer argument was a video recording

of him defending his dissertation.

I can’t show you the whole thing—it’s a long video—but

I can’t show you more than

1 minute 16 seconds. Right now we have

302,000 people watching live, so let’s

watch 1 minute 16 seconds where

he is simply asked elementary

questions about his dissertation, and how he

responds to them. Every one of you who

is watching

has stood at the blackboard,

and every one of you has defended a term paper

or even just homework, and you can very

easily judge

what it means that a member of the

Central Election Commission,

former deputy Valery Galchenko—the man

who decides who is allowed to run in

elections and who is not—defended

his dissertation. 1 minute 16 seconds.

The question is clear, and as I understand it...

I heard... listen... types and kinds...

It’s clear... things of that nature...

Like... well... he froze up...

Here, by “types” I meant

to refer to

finding people’s attitude toward the degree...

the attitude... not very successfully... well...

the relation, as it were, of the degree of activity to

the possibility, perhaps, of this activity itself...

Something like that, probably.

You saw the reaction of the chair of that

dissertation committee, who—well,

it’s obvious what that was—he did defend it, and

back then they told him, “Well done,”

Galchenko.

Off you go. He sat there—maybe he got paid for it too,

who knows—just sitting there like this, because

it looked exactly like—I remember school—like when

“Navalny, to the blackboard.”

And you don’t know the answer, so you start saying something like

anything at all, just to begin answering,

just something from the realm of general knowledge,

or from the previous lesson, or you just

mumble something. And here they ask him about types and

kinds concerning the main subject,

the very subject of his dissertation, and he goes, “Well, types...”

I mean, this is the worst student in the class.

You have to admit that. I mean, in every class there is

that one dimmest kid who simply,

if he doesn’t know, can’t even

mumble something on a tangential topic or

talk the teacher’s ear off, or just

say something, sigh, anything in that situation.

He could have said, “Oh, Maria Ivanovna (a typical Russian teacher’s name), I couldn’t, I

was sick,” or “my dog ate my

notebook,” but even so, this

dissertation committee looked at him and...

She said everything well, okay, you stamp—dash—you.

A Candidate of Sciences (advanced Russian academic degree), and off went our Candidate of Sciences.

to the Central Election Commission, and

he sat there, and someone was telling him something new,

"They’re incompetent, you fool, he’s a fool through and through."

And I’m a Candidate of Sciences.

I defended my dissertation in the прекрасной

beautiful Russia of the future, we

will strip all of them of their dissertations, I

will send them for re-education and

re-forging, and I’ll see you

next week. Bye.

[music]