Napoleon the Dismemberer, on your knees before Medvedev, Rogozin’s tooth — Putin’s corruption

[music]

Good evening, everyone. We’re live on air.

This is the program *Russia of the Future*, and that means

that in Moscow it is exactly 8:00 p.m.—or rather,

the other way around: the fact that it is now exactly 8:00 p.m. in Moscow

means that we are live

with *Russia of the Future*, and with you here in the

studio is me, Alexei Navalny, or the man

who, according to some people, tanked the ratings

of a noodle shop in Moscow—that’s what the Kremlin media called me.

The Kremlin media did. I didn’t actually

tank the noodle shop’s ratings—it did that to itself.

Some crook from

some noodle place I’d never even heard of

decided to join the other

crooks, like

the Armenia restaurant, Mosgortrans (Moscow public transit operator), and

the National Guard, who filed lawsuits over

the organization of rallies. It turned out that

the rallies, and the people who

took to the streets of Moscow to protest over

the refusal to allow candidates onto the ballot, somehow

interfered with some damn noodle shop.

I don’t even know—some nobody just decided

to curry favor with Sobyanin (Moscow mayor), or maybe

to advertise his disgusting

business in this strange, exotic way.

His noodle shop joined in too.

He rushed in with this lawsuit as well, and no doubt

he’ll squeeze a few thousand rubles out of us

and claim that, you know, he sold far less noodles

that day because of us.

But indeed, it wasn’t just *Izvestia*—

people went onto sites like

Google, Yelp, and all the others and gave it

one- and two-star ratings. In fact, if

you do that right now, I’ll be

very happy. Let that noodle shop

never be used by anyone ever again. Its owner is

a crook and an idiot—let him go bankrupt. Please send me

your questions with the hashtag

#RussiaOfTheFuture on Twitter; they’ll be passed along here

and I’ll answer them as attentively as I can.

Some of you have probably noticed that

there’s been a renovation behind me.

We redid the backdrop because the old one

had gotten a bit worn out, so now our

apartment building has become much bigger.

Everything is exactly like what happens

in Moscow: lower buildings get demolished and

replaced with huge high-rises. And now we have

two cats, because especially on this

side you can see that one cat

is especially large and fat for the size

of this window. This is the very cat that

wasn’t allowed into Arafat—we gave him shelter here.

The first story I’d like

to begin with is a story

worthy of a TV series or

a great film—a sad story,

quite a tragic one. Remember the film *Three

Billboards*? There are series of that kind too,

and in general it’s a popular genre where

some volunteers accidentally

start investigating something on their own in

small-town America, most often

the American heartland, because that’s where

these kinds of series and films are usually set—

in rural America.

Though of course they should make them about

Russia too. And they stumble onto

injustice, a crime, a murder,

blood traces, and then those blood traces

lead somewhere, and it turns out that

the crime is being covered up. Then it turns out

that the police are covering it up, and so on.

It all goes right to the top. It’s just

a nightmare and total chaos. And that is exactly

what is happening right now in the city of Azov

in the Rostov region. Several people wrote to me

saying, “Alexei,

please talk about this.” So I am,

because this story

is outrageous, and unfortunately not enough

people are talking about it. It’s really just

an incredible story. So, on November 2,

very recently, a man named Ruslan

Popov called and said,

“I’m on my way home.” He never made it home. He disappeared.

He was gone one day, then two days.

Volunteers began searching for him

and simply combing through the area.

And in the end, there was no sign of the man anywhere.

They just walked everywhere along the route he

usually took.

And in one spot on the road they found

blood traces and this man’s sneakers.

Let’s watch 29 seconds.

This is simply a crime scene. Volunteers,

while searching for the missing man, saw

a skid mark—very clear, speed matters here—

leading onward.

You can see this skid mark here,

and here we also have blood, and farther on

drag marks.

From the car that, in all

likelihood, hit him.

His sneakers were also found nearby.

So: blood, a skid mark,

a skid mark,

drag marks from the body, and the man’s sneakers.

But there was no man, and the police had no

report or statement saying that he had been

found, that there was a beaten body, that there had been a traffic accident—nothing.

Nothing. The man’s relatives began

calling every morgue.

The volunteers started calling the morgues too,

and no one said anything. The morgues said they had no such

person. Three days later, when they

had already started going from morgue to morgue on foot,

the body of Ruslan Popov was found.

It was found in one of the morgues, and

the morgue staff said that

the body had been brought in from a completely different

place, located 30 kilometers away

from there, in a forest belt.

Here you can see a diagram of the place where he was hit, where there are

skid marks, sneakers, and blood.

this person's blood, and where the body was found

as you can see, it's simply far away, it's not just that

you know, the car hit him and the body was thrown aside

it's about 30 kilometers (19 miles) as the crow flies, if

by road it's much farther, deep into

a forest belt, that is, he was hit in one place

loaded into a car and taken somewhere else

hidden in the woods, and then they began

reviewing surveillance camera footage

they found the car, the car

belongs to an Interior Ministry major named Roman

Lobanov, who urgently left for somewhere

on some kind of business trip, but already under the weight

of this evidence that had been

found by volunteers, this man

is arrested

only one thing, though, is that

relatives and friends are watching the footage

they are in the register, in the case materials now

this footage has now been classified, and the cameras show

that the car that hit this

person, at a gas station and somewhere else,

did not contain only this Roman Lobanov, but also

a certain Interior Ministry colonel and other

people

a scandal erupts too; it turns out that if

one person hit him, then the others took part in

covering up the crime. The Rostov regional Interior Ministry

starts an internal review and tries to convince everyone

shouting that there was no one else

in the car

even though this directly contradicts, first of all,

the video footage, yes, what was recorded

by the camera on video, and second, it simply

obviously contradicts common sense

so in the end, what do we have now in Rostov Region

are high-ranking

Interior Ministry officers, senior officers, a major and a lieutenant colonel

at the very least, and with them some other people

from the Interior Ministry, maybe not, we don't know; they are driving at

very high speed and veer onto the shoulder

we assume someone there was drunk at the

wheel, though now it's no longer possible

to establish otherwise; they hit

a person and kill him

it may have been manslaughter, but still a killing, and they then

on the shoulder, that is, he himself was simply walking along it

Ruslan Popov wasn't breaking any rules

they hit him, his body is thrown onto

the roadside, his sneakers are lying there

they get out, take the body, drag it along

the shoulder, hide it in the trunk, and take it

30 kilometers (19 miles) away to some forest belt, where

they pull it out of the car

carry it into the tree line and dump it there in order to

cover up the crime. I repeat: this was done by

police officers, senior Interior Ministry officers

but then the pyramid grows further: now the Interior Ministry

in Rostov is supposedly conducting a review and

says there was no one else there, meaning

it turns out that, well, basically

Interior Ministry officers committed a killing

they hid the traces of the crime and, under the

weight of the evidence, were forced to

arrest the one who was behind the wheel, while all the

other participants in the crime

excuse me, when the body was moved and hidden again

all of you became participants in this killing

are now already being protected, defended by

the leadership of the Rostov regional Interior Ministry

I mean, this is literally a story out of

a TV series, and all of this happened; this

police officer, this major, was arrested

only because volunteers caused

this scandal, because they kept going, because

they were searching and found these traces

of braking, found blood, then the car

and kept going. If they hadn't done this, people simply

would have acted as if nothing had happened: somewhere

in a forest belt they found a person with signs of

injury

dead, another dead person, just one more unresolved

case. This is very important because

really, guys, just imagine what

we can expect at all from the Interior Ministry, from

our police

if their senior officers are engaged in

things like this, and their generals, their leadership,

despite the video recording, the video recordings, and

despite the fact that you can see an Interior Ministry major in the car, and sitting there is

a colonel from the ministry, still say no, there was no

colonel there, just some unknown

person, only this killer Lobanov

but being a killer because you hit someone with a car—something like that can, in fact,

happen to anyone, but only

even if it happens to you by accident

and you accidentally hit a person

stuffing them into the trunk and taking them

to another place would never occur

to anyone. And these are police officers, and we simply

must realize two things. First,

in this same Rostov Region

quite recently, as you may remember, I

talked about this twice on the program

they imprisoned several people for taking part

in a one-person protest picket and gave them six years each

these same police officers

this same regional Interior Ministry opened those cases

and thought it was right and great

to arrest people for one-person pickets

and then send them to prison for six years, and these same

people should be fired, because if

things like this are happening under your watch, then the degree

to which your entire

territorial, regional Interior Ministry has been infected by lawlessness

is such that you cannot claim

that you, as police officers, are protecting

people. People cannot turn to you; to

you, no one simply trusts anymore

unfortunately, this is happening across the

country. The Interior Ministry system is absolutely rotten

it was already falling apart in the 1990s

it went through something in the early 2000s

not exactly a renaissance, but some order

started to be restored there, but now it

has absolutely, completely, in these last

Putin years, simply sunk into

corruption, just, well, simply into

crimes, because it has become

a press completely unaccountable to anyone

there are no independent deputies, no

public oversight, no commissions, nobody

if there is no oversight, then everything just

falls apart. This decay, this decomposition, we

can see in

the example of Rostov Region. I urge

everyone to follow this case. It

is being talked about, and this case should, it should

become one of the most high-profile of all

that is happening in the country. By the way, last

time I showed you a deputy from

this same city, Azov, who

made an appeal regarding

people arrested for taking part in pickets

I talked about that. This deputy, he

is a deputy

this deputy, sorry, made an appeal

because I simply happened to

run into him on the street

when we were filming for the program about Stalin

and the Gulag, that report where we were traveling all over

with people in wheelchairs, and he

asked to make an appeal in this case as well

too

Well, this deputy is a decent guy

Yurov, Vladimir Yurov is his name, and once again he

made an appeal in the Azov City Duma on behalf of

his own—well, that very city

Let's listen to 1 minute 17 seconds.

On November 2, in the Azov District

a terrible tragedy occurred: under the wheels

of a car, a 20-year-old young man, Ruslan

Popov, died.

But despite the full horror of the situation, and

even more grim is the fact that behind the wheel of the car

was a police officer with the rank of major,

an employee of the inter-municipal Ministry of Internal Affairs department

Azovsky.

Roman Lobanov, after loading the body of the deceased

young man

into his car, drove it away and hid it

in a forest belt.

According to available information, in the car together

with the major was a certain lieutenant colonel

who helped him hide the body.

They commit such grave crimes.

The Azov MVD department has long had a reputation, and

has earned itself the fame of being not a very effective

police department on many issues.

The police are inactive; it is impossible

to get through to them. Every year the

head of the department changes. The conclusion suggests itself that

the entire department

is rotten to the core, and it is necessary to replace not

only the head of the department, but the entire

leadership staff. The CPRF faction (Communist Party of the Russian Federation) in the Azov

City Duma, expressing condolences

to the family and loved ones of the deceased, demands from the

Investigative Committee and the prosecutor's office

a thorough investigation of all

the circumstances of what happened

and the identification of all guilty persons who

assisted and covered for Major

Lobanov.

Well done. And maybe someone there

will smirk and say, some little

district duma

—but this is exactly what they should be doing. It's a real

shame that the State Duma

doesn't do this. It's great that some

local deputies are doing it, who, by the way, still have to work

with this police force, and keep working with it, and

it's great that they are not afraid. Once again, I simply

urge everyone, especially those who live in

Rostov Region:

guys, don't be afraid, don't stay silent. We know

everything about your police. We know that

the Rostov police, the whole Rostov

Region—of course, maybe recently it is

not as much of a lawless zone as

Krasnodar Krai, but it's something close to

that, like the whole south of Russia. But nevertheless

I urge, in a sense,

simply for everyone, quite literally,

all residents of Rostov Region, I don't

know, in any available form, to express

their distrust of the police until this

case is fully investigated.

Because, well, it is impossible to put up with

the fact that in the police there are

people who continue to work there,

who hide bodies in the trunk and

drive them out to dump them in a forest belt. Well,

that means tomorrow they could do just about anything

to your relatives

and, God forbid, dump the body

in a forest belt in exactly the same way. So, about Popov—

Alex B asks me, you said there was information about

how it happened that they themselves

are telling the story—I’ll talk about that later

about Popov. It's actually quite

interesting. More broadly, continuing this whole

theme of big shots behind the wheel,

police officers, FSB people, and so on,

it really looks as if in our country

the attitude is becoming: don't stand in front of

our hood, because we are important people.

It seemed that this had gone away sometime in the middle

of the 2000s. I remember very well that back then there was

a mass movement arguing that we should not

have to give way to all these mega-

officials. Obviously, if an ambulance is driving,

you need to let it pass.

But if it's just a Mercedes with a blue

flashing light, you don't need to give way. Remember

there was the Blue Buckets movement (a Russian protest movement against officials' misuse of blue emergency lights)

and then those crooks from United

Russia started tightening

the legislation, and now once again

we have entered simply this

era of absurd lawlessness, when they

will just drive along, run over

you, and it is considered that this is exactly how it should be. And

in Moscow, fortunately, without such severe

consequences, exactly the same

thing is happening.

So, if you live in Moscow, you know

this place—Vasilyevsky Spusk—and beyond

Moskvoretsky Bridge. If you don’t know,

Vasilyevsky Spusk is right near the Cathedral

of Christ the Savior and St. Basil’s

Cathedral, right at the bottom of Red Square, and

the Big Moskvoretsky Bridge.

On the Big Moskvoretsky Bridge, there was that notorious place where

Nemtsov was shot (Boris Nemtsov, opposition politician). Traffic there is organized

in such a way that it would be very convenient to turn off

the bridge onto the embankment, and after driving

a little way, sort of along Red Square, past

the end of Vasilyevsky Spusk—but

traffic is arranged so that you can’t drive there,

even though it would be very convenient.

You can turn one way, but not the other.

And, well, all sorts of big officials

are constantly driving there—those very

Mercedes cars with flashing lights, darting around there

endlessly, and even without the lights,

just some people with official IDs.

They drive there all the time. And there’s this motorists’ movement

led by

Andrei Orel; he ran for the Moscow City Duma

in my district, Maryina. I’ve talked about him

here before. So they simply

stand there and, in that spot, monitor

compliance with traffic rules. And

now let’s watch 40 seconds of what

happened to them and to the car involved.

[music]

The plan protected...

I

Oh

Where—what am I even saying?

Hello, Kitay-Gorod police department.

Broccoli... Vanga... your documents...

They’ll prepare them for you... basically, this is a statement

claiming that someone threw themselves under the car.

It’s better to take... under your code... that

Of course, it’s all very sluggish, but I mean, they

are standing there on Vasilyevsky Spusk.

A beautiful black car pulls up—a

Mercedes

whose driver wants to break the traffic rules.

But as you saw,

with the StopXam movement, usually people

see that there are people there and that they can’t drive through,

and they’re being filmed, so they just turn around

and go make a U-turn somewhere else.

It takes three minutes longer.

I mean, you’re not going to run someone over, right?

But these big shots are driving there, so they

just drive into the person

and leave the scene. Then they call

the police and say, ‘There, please detain those

who are standing there and not letting us break the traffic

rules.’ So the police detain them,

arrest them, and then something truly

remarkable happens: they call in

a technical specialist, supposedly to the

scene

of the offense. What do you think

they call in a technical specialist for?

To take the cameras away from these

people and erase all the information from them.

They recorded audio of the technical

specialist

discussing it. Fortunately, they were recording

onto a second memory card there, so all the

video recordings

were preserved. But the fact is that these big shots

and the police call in a technical

specialist to delete the video of the

collision.

As I understand it, they wanted to find that video, and I was driving...

The driver said one of them threw himself

under the car—one of the four who were brought into this little room.

These three were brought here, and he says they’re copying it

for themselves first. I hope you

heard it clearly enough—they say there

that first they copy the video for themselves,

and then deliberately wipe it. The story

continued with the fact that

these three people were jailed—these

people who were not letting others break the

traffic rules. One of them got, according to the

court record, 15 days.

Two others got 13 days each. Don’t stand in the way

of the great.

Really, to them we are nobody.

If they need to get through, they can run us over, and when

they do, they’ll also write in their statement

that you’ll be ‘dealt with’ on top of that.

And then they’ll lock you up for 15 days, because

you’re not supposed to stand in front of big black

cars. I just wanted to express

my support

for those people from the motorists’ movement,

for Orel and all his comrades.

These are, of course, difficult times for them now.

A few years ago, yes, they really

really

—well, not exactly terrorized people, but they did go after

all those who drove into oncoming lanes

and so on. But at least they were

effectively stopping it. Now they just drive over them.

Why? Because lawlessness

has reached a whole new level—there are no courts, no one to turn to, that degree of arbitrariness.

Of course. But if three years ago

someone had told me a story about how

first they drove into someone, and then claimed

he had thrown himself under the car, and then he was

jailed as well—though they say you can

give 15 days to a person who was

run over by some obedient official car—

well, they found a reason. And unfortunately

this will keep developing further and further in

our country, because the doors have been opened

for all these wonderful

police enforcers. They’ve received

a very clear signal: for us

there is some law that can be

twisted any way they like, and some sham court

can convict us for any amount, any term—whatever they want.

But for them, no law exists at all.

And one of the guys also said

that no law exists at all there.

This week, he was ultimately forced to somehow

listen to the will of the people and leave for Mexico.

Comrade Evo Morales

a great friend of Vladimir Putin, who

thought he could do exactly the same things

as Vladimir Putin, who also spent a very

long time posturing here and loved holding meetings.

Let's watch 33 seconds of Putin

and Evo Morales meeting to discuss

cooperation, because both of them

seemed to think they would be eternal

presidents for life. Major companies

are investing substantial resources. Gazprom, for example,

has invested $500 million, and billions

of dollars in the development of the oil and gas sector.

Rosatom is building a center for nuclear

research, and our equipment is increasingly in demand,

including

automotive equipment as well.

Many of our students study at Russian

universities. We will continue to develop

this kind of cooperation. Our countries

share a similar approach: that

states must act

sovereignly and independently, both on

the international stage and in developing

bilateral relations.

We have 61,000 people watching us live.

What's going on? Did you all

stop watching cat videos or something? I don't

know. Usually, at this point, when we're talking about Morales,

we have about 22,000 people watching us

live. But now it's 60,000. A big hello to everyone.

Hi, we're discussing Evo Morales,

a great friend of Putin who was

forced to leave. What made Evo Morales

so similar to Putin? In fact, they're fairly

similar guys. Both of them, thanks to

high oil prices, had the opportunity

to tell fairy tales like, 'I lifted you all

out of the dirt and made you into decent

people.' Under both Putin and Morales, for

a certain period of time,

people's standard of living rose fairly quickly.

Oil money came in, and

Morales got elected, and then said,

'I want to run again,' and he got elected again.

Then he said, 'Well, two terms aren't enough for me,

I need to be elected again.' People started

to get angry, people started taking to the

streets. He said, 'Fine, I'll hold a

referendum.' He held a referendum and

lost it. But after

losing the referendum, he had a whole

group of judges whom he himself had appointed.

Just like with Putin, this group

of servants came out and said, 'You know,

this violates our wonderful Bolshevik-style

constitution. We believe that Comrade

Morales should be able to run any number of times.'

So he spat on the referendum and

went into a new election, which

is, of course, a direct parallel with

Putin.

He rigged it, and what did he get?

He got protests, which we're about to see now.

37 seconds.

[music]

[applause]

[applause]

Only

[applause]

Well, as you can see, actually these are

pretty similar to Moscow—these kinds of

rallies that don't really look

particularly aggressive or

angry, but there were more and more of them.

These local

'white-ribbon' protesters (a reference to Russia's 2011–2012 protest movement) came out waving flags

and saying, 'What the hell? We don't want this.'

I mean, sure, Morales did raise

people's standard of living at one point

because there was our oil that

was coming from our dear Bolivian

soil. But come on—he was in power for one term,

then a second term, and that's enough, that's it.

We're done with this. Morales, just leave.' But

he didn't want to go, and more and more people came out.

Then what happened was exactly the thing

that, unfortunately, we still can't achieve:

so many people came out that simply

the police and the military switched to their side.

And that's how it happens everywhere, and that's how

it will happen here too, because all these

police officers, all these people in

uniform—they will, quite obviously,

ultimately swear loyalty and serve

society when they see

that people have still come out into the streets and

that what happened there is happening. Now let's

watch the wonderful

great Comrade Morales, who was

sure that, like Putin, he would be there forever.

He gave a 44-second speech and said that

he had to leave...

Germanu

turizmu

but at that moment... Rebecca, I...

the public sector... questioning... I...

from the intonation... some kind of combing her lies

are monster manus

donator minako dushu mir dets

but argue nosik top issues arise praded

patriot from bama zakon taylor

krysa lucha poley vanguard byuro pas if

If you read the subtitles, then you saw

exactly what it was: just a stream of absolute hypocrisy.

Really, with this kind of

sincere-eyed, 'brothers and sisters,' tone:

'The police dealt us an unexpected blow.'

Dude, you just shouldn't have

run again. Two terms—two

terms. You were in power for a long time,

for ten years, but that's it—bye-bye. Someone

else should become president. That's how

it works. People want power to

change hands. But first he lies, cheats, and his

judges spit on the constitution, and...

Then he says, “brothers and sisters,” and—

they dealt a blow. No, they didn’t deal any

blow at all. It’s just that all of us—in Bolivia and in

Russia—want power to change hands regularly.

Some people like Morales, some

people like Putin. Fine—then let’s elect

the next one. Why should we have to

live out our whole lives while you keep the president

in power? In practice, it all still

comes down to money and corruption. Putin is

monstrously corrupt, and Morales is

exactly the same. There were scandals involving his

family—brothers, daughters, and everyone

else—because no matter how much they

talk about “brothers and sisters,”

behind all of it there is simply

money, a desire for power, and a desire

for unchecked enrichment. And that’s why I’m

very glad that all of this happened in Bolivia

and that it is another example for us:

protests work, demonstrations work. If

we’re unhappy about something or want

to achieve something, we need to take to the streets and

not be afraid to come out as many times as

necessary. But in Bolivia, he didn’t leave

right away either. People came out once, then twice, then

the 22nd, the 23rd time—when a huge number of people came out,

the police said, “Well, it looks like that’s it,”

they won—and that’s what happened.

chillin gout, I guess that can be

read as: should we expect from you and your

team, in the end, a Strategy 2020—our

Strategy 2020? That’s Putin’s Strategy

2020. That’s a very good idea; of course we’ll

discuss it. CO2 asks me

to comment on Medvedev’s response about

the latest investigations. The latest

investigation—it seems Medvedev

our latest investigation was about Prosecutor

Popov, but as I understand it, Medvedev

didn’t comment on it. Maybe that

just happened right now; then we’ll discuss it

in the next program. But

before Popov, I’d like to discuss

Dmitry Rogozin’s tooth and Vladimir Putin’s

corruption. These things are very closely connected,

because this week Putin

simply stunned us. He had just been

defending Morales—you saw him, Morales, how he

was speaking in complete seriousness, saying

“brothers and sisters, how can this be, under

threat, democracy is being undermined,” and all that.

I understand that you’re a liar, a hypocrite, a crook, and

then Putin, with some kind of amazement,

was telling us, “My God, it turns out that at

the Vostochny Cosmodrome (a Russian spaceport),

there’s terrible corruption. No matter what you do, they still

steal hundreds of millions

of rubles.” Let’s listen to Vladimir

Putin,

who, in the twentieth year of his

presidency, is outraged by corruption: “A hundred

times it was said: work transparently,

the money is transparent, huge sums have been allocated, this

project is practically

of nationwide importance.”

“No, they steal hundreds of millions, by the hundreds

of millions.”

“There’s no order there; to this day they still haven’t

managed to establish proper order.” Whenever

you watch a video like that, you want to ask: who

are you addressing? A hundred times it was said?

Order? You haven’t managed to establish it in 20

years in power. He appoints all

the prosecutors, all the Interior Ministry chiefs, all the FSB

chiefs—and still, no, they just couldn’t establish order.

And why not? And who was saying, a hundred

times, long, long ago, that there was terrible

corruption in the construction of the Vostochny Cosmodrome?

Who said that there

billions would be stolen there? Who said

that what Dmitry Rogozin was doing

would lead to even more billions

being stolen? Vladimir Putin? No.

Here, please, look here: Alexei

Navalny talked about it, Lyubov Sobol talked

about it. We at the FBK (Anti-Corruption Foundation) dealt with it quite

specifically,

with corruption in general and with the construction

of the Vostochny Cosmodrome. Sobol led that

project. We dug into

each specific construction site, how

when you build without documents, on

a site like that you can write down

whatever amount you want. And remember, back then Dmitry Rogozin

already had a whole—why did I remember

Rogozin’s tooth? He had a whole little

dust-up with that same Lyubov Sobol,

because in 2012 there was

his famous promise that he’d “bet his tooth”

that the Vostochny Cosmodrome would be built in

2012. Even then, we said

it would not be built, and Sobol

already in 2015, when it became clear

that we had been right, launched a whole project,

a whole campaign. She demanded that

Dmitry Rogozin

give her his tooth, because she

had won that argument and the Vostochny Cosmodrome

had not been built, and it was clear that it would not

be built. Show that post—we have

Sobol’s post where she demands the tooth from

Rogozin; there was such a funny

photo.

Well, let’s better watch the video of Sobol

for 50 seconds, where she argues with

Rogozin and demands that he give her his tooth

and talks about Vostochny: “I demand

that Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin

give me his tooth. Dmitry Rogozin,

you promised journalists you’d give up your tooth

if the Vostochny Cosmodrome was not

built in 2015. It is now 2016, but

the cosmodrome is still not ready. I know

how massive the corruption is and what a

mess is going on in the construction of

the Vostochny Cosmodrome.”

Most of the facilities at the Vostochny Cosmodrome

were built with serious violations

of urban planning regulations and rules

the construction of most of the key

facilities began before the preparation of

the official design documentation. I also

found out that for some of the sites

Roscosmos and the organizations subordinate to it

entered into fictitious state

contracts worth hundreds of millions of rubles and

what’s more, they are still doing it now

this is the most corrupt construction project in

the country, but instead of at least

trying to restore order, Dmitry Rogozin

boasts on Twitter about the jailing of a lead

engineer who took a bribe of 50,000

rubles (about a few hundred U.S. dollars). Heard that? Yes, that was three years ago, well

they actually started dealing with this back in 2012

three years ago, Sobol spoke out and

said: this is the most corrupt

construction project in the country, which was already

to which Rogozin replied, basically: idiot, shut up, you

don’t understand anything, don’t stick your nose into

things that aren’t your business, we are great space people, you don’t

understand the issue at all, just some pathetic lawyers

but as it turned out, we were right. If only

Putin and Rogozin and everyone else had

listened to us back then — and even better, if

they had left their posts when they were

supposed to, in 2008, they would no longer have been

there, then the corruption during

the construction of Vostochny (the Russian spaceport) either would not have

existed or would have been far less severe

because either you want

to fight corruption, or you don’t

and all this time, this whole

crowd

in Spetsstroy, the FSB, and the rest of them

the whole of Roscosmos — they, precisely they, are the ones who

supervised it, the ones who built it, and the ones who stole

those billions. And now Putin says, yes

yes, how could this happen — and now they say

criminal cases have been opened, hundreds

of millions, billions were stolen, and they recovered

some utterly trivial amount; the rest will not

be returned. Well, because who is going to

return it? The very same people who

opened a small number of

criminal cases — they controlled all of this

they took part in this corruption. But

of course, when a company

starts construction without the required permits

and paperwork, they get the money, they

effectively begin “using” it for something, well

of course they delivered a few suitcases of cash

to the supervising FSB people, because

of course the security services control

the progress of construction at this cosmodrome

Vostochny — everyone there knew perfectly well

that if you are doing anything at all without

documents, first of all you are not

digging the right thing at all — which is exactly what happened

so, you know, to this day there are almost no

launches from Vostochny because it was simply

built incorrectly. Well, that’s how it was “resolved”

with this suitcase, that suitcase, the *chemodan* (suitcase of cash), because

when they started building, all of this was estimated at

120 billion rubles, and as of today

construction costs are 300 billion — 300

more than double

all of this has ballooned, but it is obvious that out of those

30 billion, several billion

rubles

went precisely to the people who were supposed to

be making these arrests. And it would be

simply ridiculous

to expect that we can get builders to show

any desire to work without

corruption

if everyone here is steeped in that corruption

here I would like to smoothly move on to

our wonderful Moscow prosecutor

about whom we released an investigation on

Monday. Huge thanks to everyone who

shared it

and it needs further

circulation, because this is once again

another great example of how this Putin regime

won’t achieve a damn thing

for an entirely objective reason

because their prosecutors are exactly the kind

like this one

because, well, you see, we

are not the FSB, we are nobody, yet we found these villas in

Montenegro and houses in Spain

and he — he was only supposed to be doing his job

he was the prosecutor of Moscow, he was the prosecutor of

Dagestan too — they basically sent a goat

to guard the cabbage patch, one of the most

corrupt republics, and there

they send a man who by that point had already

with some incomprehensible money

built hotels in Montenegro

houses in Spain, and he arrives to fight

corruption in Dagestan. What do you think

the hell is going to happen? Will he defeat corruption

in Dagestan

or will he make enough for a couple more hotels abroad

abroad? Let’s spend 1 minute 20 seconds

just going over it once again — this is

what property the Moscow prosecutor owns

this is what his family built

with money of unclear origin, and what, well

obviously

his superiors could have found out with the slightest desire

or the FSB bodies or other

oversight agencies, if they had even the

slightest interest in making the prosecutor’s office

less corrupt. How can anyone expect anything

when our

Moscow prosecutor is effectively the second

person in the prosecution hierarchy, where there is

the Prosecutor General, then the Moscow prosecutor

not counting the deputy prosecutor general

but overall, in practical terms

the Moscow prosecutor is person

number two. Let’s look at what this man managed

to acquire while earning at the time

some 60,000 rubles a month. We’re flying over

Ahead, by the bay in Qatar, there’s a small

tourist village.

The Marine hotel, which we just

visited, is up ahead. Its area is more than 1,000

square meters. Obviously, the main thing here

is not the rooms, of course,

but the view — it’s simply priceless. Still, the house itself

can be valued at

€1.5 million. Well, just look

for yourselves: construction is in full swing, and they’re building three great

chalets, 250 square meters each. The entire

surrounding area — almost a hectare —

belongs to our company. And buenos dias,

Mr. Popov: we discover your family’s townhouse

in the city of Marbella.

Here it is — this is what Denis Popov risked

his prosecutorial career for: a beautiful

225-square-meter townhouse just 200 meters

from the sea, in a great residential complex with four-

story buildings with terraces and

balconies, and in the middle

there’s a pool and ponds. And now an apartment like this

costs around €1 million, at

the very least.

The main house is 660 square meters, four stories tall.

Behind it there’s something like a gazebo with

columns.

And of course, the second house is impressive too:

380 square meters, but with an entire underground floor and

a rooftop pool. Astrakhan Region (in southern Russia):

200 kilometers from Astrakhan and 80

kilometers from Volgograd — a whole

fishing lodge, and also a recreation base on

the riverbank: a hotel, a restaurant, a tennis

court,

a swimming pool — all of it on 1.5 hectares

of land. And now let’s return to the question from Alexei

Oboi, who asked me about

how exactly this information was sent to us

by the employees of the prosecutor’s office themselves.

The prosecutor’s office.

What did they tell us? We have 75,000

people watching us live — some kind of

anomalous number. Well, I’m very glad, I’m

very glad you all came. It’s great, it’s

wonderful. I hope you’re not

some sinister bots, and that Margarita

Simonyan (a prominent Russian state media figure) won’t be tomorrow

saying that we’re artificially inflating the live

stream. So anyway, I’d just like

to answer Alexei.

What people from the prosecutor’s office wrote to us about, among other things, was this:

you can see even from

the set of properties alone that this is a very

strange, eclectic mix. There’s

some hotels in Montenegro, they started

building them — such a strange investment

project. At first they wanted to sell apartments

at the hotel,

then a second hotel in the mountains, then

they buy something in Spain, then in

Astrakhan Region a fishing lodge.

These are clearly not the kinds of businesses that can

generate money, because from everything

it’s obvious they were simply bringing in suitcases of

cash. You can hide it under the

floor, as we saw in the case of that colonel from the Interior Ministry in Ufa,

or police officer Zakharchenko.

But where do you invest it? It’s obvious that

he was simply trying to stash away this money

that was burning a hole in his pocket,

somewhere. I’m sure we didn’t find a lot of things.

I have no doubt whatsoever that we

didn’t find most of it. I mean,

there’s just a lot of money — but where do you put it? Let’s say

someone brought €2 million

for some case. You need to somehow

put it somewhere — so you buy a hotel in Montenegro, and then

they bring another 500,000. What do you do with that

500,000? To avoid panic, you buy an apartment

in Spain. But this

is impossible to hide. First of all, you

have to keep going there all the time. Second,

it’s a whole operation — hotels,

a fishing lodge — all of this

has staff, people connected to the fishing lodge,

friends, acquaintances — people talk.

Naturally, some lower-level

employees of the prosecutor’s office

work in a totally corrupt institution, but we

understand that, first, some

corrupt officials envy other

corrupt officials, and second, you can’t rule out

the possibility that there are still some decent people

there. This information can’t be hidden, so

someone got angry and said:

check out Popov’s assets — the guy is

openly buying hotels in

Montenegro. Look, there’s this whole hotel in

Montenegro. They wrote to us, and we started

looking.

To be honest, we were a little skeptical, but

then we discovered: yes, the man was simply

buying things in his wife’s name, and at the same time

he was supposed to list them in his asset

declaration. He listed nothing in the declaration. His salary

at that moment was 700,000

rubles a year — that’s about 60,000 rubles a

month. His wife’s income: zero. And yet he buys and

keeps buying. It’s impossible to hide

that, which is why people write to us. And now

you’ve just seen all of this.

Now, against that backdrop,

let’s enjoy how the prosecutor, when he was

being appointed,

to Moscow, spoke in the Moscow

City Duma — the very one where they did not allow

the

independent candidates in. And here’s a question for you again, by the way:

did he want there to be, in the Moscow

City Duma, did Prosecutor Popov want

even a single person there who would

ask him

questions about his real estate?

They ended up there thanks to you and

thanks to Smart Voting (an opposition tactical voting strategy), we have

representatives from both the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and A Just Russia,

as well as Yabloko — all three opposition

The factions sent parliamentary inquiries.

so that Prosecutor Popov would answer

us where exactly he got the money from.

for all this real estate. Of course, he

did not want these people to get elected, precisely

which is why he actively helped

block the registration of all independent

candidates. There is, like, a direct connection here.

He has a vital personal interest in there being

no independent people there at all. Thanks to

you, they got through. But let’s go back—44 seconds

of how Popov speaks before

the deputies. Let’s appreciate this—he’s just

such an exceptionally honest man. Appointment

to the post of Moscow prosecutor is, for me,

without a doubt, a very important stage

in my work and in my life. It is an element

of serious trust on the part of

the leadership of the Prosecutor General’s Office

of the Russian Federation, which I am obliged

to justify, as well as an opportunity to apply

my professional qualities and knowledge in

the cause of protecting the rights and freedoms of citizens,

the legally protected interests of society and

the state. The problems and pressing issues

that concern the city’s residents are familiar to me.

Special attention must be paid

to the protection of the rights

of entrepreneurs, and to the targeted use of funds.

In September of this year, there will be

elections to the City Duma. The Moscow prosecutor’s office

will traditionally take part in

ensuring legality during their conduct.

Great, right? The Moscow prosecutor’s office will

traditionally take part in ensuring

the rule of law. Translated into

plain human language:

we will do everything so that not a single person sits here

who might start asking questions about

my hotels in Montenegro.

It really does sound astonishing, by the way.

Our investigation has already been watched by

more than two million people, and

it has caused quite a stir. Deputies are writing,

asking the prosecutor why he wrote

all those petty cases, but Popov is silent, completely silent.

The Prosecutor General’s Office under Chaika (former Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika) is silent too.

Silent. So millions of people

are discussing the fact that your number two man in

the prosecutor’s office is a crook and a thief, that he has illegally

and unjustifiably enriched himself, and they simply

say nothing. They could come out and say: we have nothing to do with this,

this is all lies, all deception. But they stay silent. So

it’s clear they have two possible strategies.

Either it will be like with Sergunina (Moscow Deputy Mayor Natalia Sergunina),

where they say absolutely nothing because

that operation is impossible. When we released

our investigation into Deputy Mayor Sergunina, she still

has not said a single word.

Sobyanin (Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin) still has not said

a single word either. There is simply ironclad

evidence that people are stealing

billions, and they just pretend nothing

is happening—oh look, what cute cats,

that’s all we care about now.

Nothing else. And these people will do the same—just

stay silent.

Or else, as happened in

some cases with Medvedev (former Russian president and prime minister Dmitry Medvedev),

after some time,

a few weeks, when it seems the situation has

kind of

been forgotten, they will then file

some nonsense lawsuit against us, and that court case

they will win—and in one day, just like they

win all the other court cases. Like how

some noodle restaurant in Armenia is supposedly winning now,

and then they’ll run after me shouting,

“Immediately delete your

investigation—it damages the honor

and dignity of our most honest prosecutor.”

And when asked where he got the money for all

of this, they say, well, that has absolutely nothing

to do with the court proceedings, that’s

nonsense, his wife bought it all—and he divorced

his wife.

And the fact that in 2010 he was not divorced yet—

well, that was back in 2010, and

in general, please produce a video recording

of the wife saying, “I built these

hotels with corrupt money.” There is no

video recording, so you were unable to

prove anything—delete your video. But what should we

do now? Spread

the investigation, first and foremost.

Spread it so that people see it.

How many people are watching the live stream

right now?

More than 75,000 people. If every tenth

one of you watching live simply

shares this link one more time, then already

millions of Russian citizens

—millions—will see all of this, and that matters.

Because if we want, sooner or later,

for people to understand the moral situation,

on a mass scale, all of it,

and to take to the streets, then we need to

explain it to them. And the situation with Popov once again

perfectly shows that there are no

prospects for our country as long as power

remains in the hands of Putin, Popov, and Chaika.

Now let’s look at the questions. Valentin

asks: what can you say about agents for

individuals? Indeed, right now

they are adopting some strange law under

which individuals can be

designated as foreign agents. I assume that

this is, of course, being done specifically for us.

They rigged, put together some kind of

scheme to designate FBK (the Anti-Corruption Foundation) as

a foreign agent, because some

strange guy from Spain, as you may remember,

who knew nothing about us, knew nothing

about Russia, nevertheless sent

$2,000 to our blocked

account. We were unable to return it, and we were

declared a foreign agent. And the point

of the new law is that if you

if you receive money from a foreign agent,

I mean, if you get a salary from one,

then you too can be designated as an individual

foreign agent, and so if

you post on Facebook or write on

Twitter, apparently on every single post

you have to write that you are a foreign agent,

so in this way they can designate a great many people

as foreign agents, I don’t know,

journalists from a huge number of media outlets and

just ordinary people. If you run ads on YouTube,

for example, we don’t have ads on YouTube, but those

people who do,

who have ads on YouTube—those four seconds

of ads you watch before a video—well, they

get monetization from that, some kind of

tiny amount, but it still comes in. And where

does it come from? From California, from the state of

California. So that means you’re receiving money from

YouTube, which means you’re a foreign agent, and you

will have to create a legal entity.

I mean, it’s some kind of hellish

absolutely

law aimed at everyone who

writes anything at all on social media in Russia.

Viktor Medved asks: this week

Putin supported the idea of celebrating

the liberation from the Tatar-Mongol yoke (the period of Mongol domination over Rus’), well,

though it seems they later denied it; he did support it, but

none of this moved into any practical

stage. But in fact, you can see

with what pomp they celebrated

the anniversary,

the anniversary of the 1941 parade, good Lord. In

Soviet times, when all those

veterans were still alive,

they never celebrated anything even remotely like this

because, well, basically,

what can Putin sell

as an achievement? There’s no economy, no science,

no education, nothing. All he can

talk about is how he, Vladimir

Putin, and his Igor Sechin,

Vladimir Medinsky, I don’t know, some

Alexei Miller, how they won the Great

Patriotic War (the Soviet term for World War II), and that’s what they

are selling. So I wouldn’t be surprised if they

keep inventing more and more and

more amazing holidays. I’ll say a couple more

words about how we filmed this

video. It was actually a fairly

funny story.

By the way, I’d be interested in your feedback

about the fact that we recorded

this not in the way I usually do—a talking

head against a black background,

somewhere out in the fields, with some kind of my

acting skills, which came to me

of course

rather painfully. If you had seen

how many takes I had to redo—this whole

“I want to end up in the prosecutor’s apartment”

makes you feel very stupid. But it seems

people are writing that it’s more interesting than

a regular standard video, and here

it’s a classic situation:

no blessing in disguise—misfortune

helped us out. We never would have started making

this kind of video

if all this equipment hadn’t been seized from us.

There’s a studio right next to us where

I usually record videos, but in it

you can’t record now because, well,

there isn’t even any light there—they took absolutely

everything out of it. So we recorded

it in a funny way. Let’s watch a few

seconds of how we recorded this in my

apartment in Maryino (a district of Moscow), so you can see how

the lighting was set up for this video.

Kira, tell me please, specifically

did you learn to bend like that, or what?

Kira, it’s a very difficult profession, but at least it comes with

a prize: amazing white slippers.

We really did record this in my

apartment, and instead of a lighting fixture

we just used a desk lamp from my

children’s table, which my press secretary

Kira Yarmysh was simply holding in her hands.

Now let’s take a look—actually there

really was

this funny episode when we

were recording all this, fully aware that

this woman there, a friend of the family

of Popov, was literally on

one balcony, while I was whispering all this, and on

the other balcony you could clearly hear that

people were sitting there watching some Russian

TV series.

There’s a 44:37 segment from this apartment

a kind of backstage clip so that

you can see how we were recording. We posted a bunch of jokes in

Instagram—go enjoy them on my Instagram.

I’m waving to everyone from the car after

we upload the video about the crooks in the prosecutor’s office

in Moscow, and very quietly

look, it’s actually beautiful here,

there’s a balcony—basically, over there

right nearby, you know, someone is sitting clearly

who is that prosecutor’s friend. Very

quietly, he’s talking about them and filming on the balcony.

Really, my main—personally my main—

problem was simply

to slip into this apartment, because, well,

we understand that the prosecutor’s friend, with

99 percent probability, watches

my channel, because certain kinds of

investigations—we know very well

that some of our most attentive

viewers are all sorts of crooks and thieves

and their family members, because they’re

interested in how we expose

their colleagues and how they should

behave so they don’t get caught themselves.

So I understood that someone might

recognize me there. I didn’t want anyone

to know that I was in Montenegro; I flew there with a layover,

trying to keep a low profile. It was all

funny—you put on a cap, you put on glasses.

When we arrive in Montenegro, we're met by money changers.

Burov leads us to the car; it seems like we've gotten away from everyone.

We slipped away, no one saw me, and then suddenly—out of nowhere—

across the whole parking lot, some guy

starts shouting, “Alexei! Alexei! I want”

“to take a picture!” He comes over. I mean, in

Montenegro there are just tons of Russians, and

it's pretty hard to stay hidden. But we still always

try to make sure that

the subjects of our investigations find out about

them at the exact moment everyone else does,

when someone sends them a link to the video,

they open YouTube and see that there's a film about them.

So please write to us and let us know

your feedback.

How much did you like this new

format? Should we keep using it or not?

Should I, Georgy, and the others keep portraying

all these characters, or should we keep using some kind of miracle

actors in our report videos? This week there was a very popular video on this

topic that was, well, kind of

comical, and I joked about it.

It was also one of those, you know, kind of

videos where it's funny, even though the situation is actually terrifying.

If you want to get something done in our country, fall to your knees

before some crook like this.

Medvedev went to Siberia. He went

to Novosibirsk, then to Altai, and all of it

was staged with some kind of huge pomp this

time, along with total, super-mega

security.

Just look at how, in particular, in

Novosibirsk, police officers were lined up along the road.

They were literally placed there like posts.

Usually, when a government

motorcade passes, officers are stationed at intersections

and crosswalks simply so that

no one gets in the way of

the motorcade or accidentally drives out in front of

the cars. But here they were just standing there like posts,

all across Novosibirsk.

Let's watch 30 seconds of Medvedev driving into

the city of Novosibirsk.

They were standing there every few dozen meters.

That's what it looked like.

There they are—our police-posts, lined up like that.

Across the whole city. Don't you feel sorry for them? Poor police officers.

They don't want this. No one asks them

whether they want to be there. But let them, too, be

part of this idiocy, because they

force citizens to play along with this

idiocy, and then the authorities do the same to them.

It's like a whole vertical of idiocy

running from bottom to top and top to bottom. So anyway,

he also went to Altai, and as usual

there was a lot of the usual nonsense that

Medvedev spouts. We understand perfectly well that

he is a rather disgusting

corrupt official, a crook and a thief, and his

corruption takes a particularly revolting

form: he collects money from—well, as we explained in our investigation—

we talked about this in our investigation—

through all sorts of pseudo-charitable foundations (a reference to the anti-corruption film *He Is Not Dimon to You*)

and from various big

oligarchs, and spends it on all sorts of his own

palaces. And then some woman simply

ran up and literally dropped to

her knees. Why? Why are people falling to their knees

before Medvedev in Russia in 2019?

A country that claims it wants to be among

the world's top five—whatever that means—

artificial intelligence, nanotechnology,

everything super-mega-advanced, a leading global

power, respected once again on

the world stage—and yet here we are.

She falls to the ground before him because

she has no hot water. Thirty seconds that

some channels played off as something else, but which are actually

deeply humiliating.

And this wasn't, mind you, some remote backwater

village in the middle of nowhere where there's nothing.

This is a city, with a gas boiler house.

A gas boiler house—Gazprom, the “national treasure,” as they call it.

As you may remember, Gazprom funds

football teams, builds

all kinds of flashy buildings; at Gazprom's expense, everything

Gazprom managers have become millionaires,

all the contractors have become billionaires, but

for some reason, in order to get

what they are legally entitled to—

hot water—because if a building has no hot

water, it shouldn't even be classified as residential.

A multi-story apartment building with no hot

water for years is some kind of illegal absurdity

that the authorities should have dealt with long ago.

They should have sorted it out, and besides,

where it is technically impossible to connect hot

water, no residential building should be built there in the first place.

Right? Can you imagine Trump

coming to Detroit, say, and then

some local elderly woman runs through the security cordon

falls to her knees and says,

“Mr. Trump, for three years now we haven't been able

to get hot water in our building—140 apartments have no

hot water.” Can you imagine that

happening with any leader of a normal country?

But that's exactly how it is here.

Damn it, everything in our country is arranged so that

people can live for years in a major city

without hot water.

And their problem can only be solved by some

crook from Moscow showing up—and only

in exceptional circumstances, if you run up

and drop to your knees before him. And then

that woman said—meaning, she

barely got through the security cordon—and

that someone tripped her. I don't know; it doesn't

look like someone tripped her. It looks

like she really did fall to her knees. But this is

truly, deeply humiliating for the whole

country—for the entire country.

How are people supposed to solve their

most basic problems?

If that woman hadn't fallen to her knees,

Medvedev would have come, Medvedev would have left, and there still

would have been no hot water—just as before. And if

those people later, without cameras, without

Medvedev around, had gone chasing after the governor...

so that they would properly get 15 days in jail

of arrest for the fact that they

in some way disturbed the peace of these

wonderful people, and by the way

very wonderful, yes. Moving on as well

Medvedev explained how he would solve the problem

here, this part—let's watch 19

seconds

Medvedev's answer about what needs to be done with

a territory where there isn't even hot

water, and yet development will happen, here

first he killed her, chopped her into several pieces

before that, he dumped some body part into

the video recording—we can watch it

actively, by the way. A separate issue

that simply outrages me is that this

shows how our

police work. All these video recordings

the video of him throwing away

some body parts into the Fontanka River

we'll play it without sound; you'll hear what I

am saying. There, there, there—you can see, there he is

the idiot walks up to the embankment

throws some bag in there, walks away, then after

some time. This video recording is from

the materials of the criminal case, of course

a high-profile murder. So, such a

brutal one—the whole country is discussing it, and

the police are leaking it left and right

all of it. Yesterday on Twitter I saw a head from

the girl's severed head, all covered in blood

it's all been published, the internet is flooded

with photographs that are official

confidential material, and damn it, the relatives seeing

it, and some friends and acquaintances—how is any of this

all this is part of a criminal

case. These are all confidential things, and for

the safekeeping of these confidential materials

the officers in uniform are responsible, and they

really ought to be fired. Nevertheless, they

for fun or for whatever reason, send

it off somewhere, leaking this severed

head or whatever else, and all of this

gets discussed—haha, hehe, lots of jokes on this

topic, but still

these police officers need to be fired because

because they should use their

heads before publishing all this

secondly, they should remember the

relatives—they should think about them, they

should remember the law, and in general

excuse me, but how can we

expect the safekeeping of any kind of

in such a nomenklatura-style organization (a Soviet-style bureaucratic elite structure), very

he was very fond of Vladimir Putin. Some time

ago, pranksters fooled him

they called him and asked whether he wanted to become

a trusted representative, and he was practically

squealing with delight, saying how much he loved

Vladimir Putin, how much he adored Crimea

and everything else, how badly he wanted

to be given some kind of early promotion

in the academic elite, another rank, so that

he would be made a professor. He adored

Vladimir Putin. Well, naturally here

everyone really piled onto this

Putin-lover, because it simply turned out

that he, like all great lovers

of Vladimir Putin, had something not quite right

in his head

however, all this is not the main part of our

story, because, well, a family drama

an argument

a husband killed his wife, a wife killed her husband—this is what

happens in Russia every single day, sadly

to great regret. The story took on new

dimensions when first this

Military-Historical Society

which had been very proud of this Sokolov removed

him from its lists and started lying that

he had never even been a member

naturally, the entire internet was

instantly filled with screenshots

from the Google cache and the Yandex cache showing that

it was all lies—he was a member

of the Military-Historical Society, he

belongs to that whole circle of Putin's

cheerleaders who, well, help him

use

history to strengthen his power, but

Putin's goal

the rector of this St. Petersburg

university, and in fact his influence

and administrative resources are greatly

underestimated by many people. He is an important person

a very corrupt person, a person

who is robbing St. Petersburg

University, but in some sense gives

a kind of immunity to many such pro-Putin figures

there, who sit under his wing. So

as for Sokolov

for me, this story took on the most

striking new dimensions when I, like

everyone else, saw the complaint that

had been filed against him back in 2008. Let's

read it

what another

student wrote about him—his live-in partner, who lived

with Sokolov. He grabbed me by the hands and began

tying me up with a rope that he had prepared

in advance

Sokolov went into the next room while

I was left tied up in the hallway

he returned with an iron and plugged it into

the outlet. When the iron heated up, he brought it to

my face so that I could feel the

heat coming off it, and began threatening that he would disfigure me

for life, after which he methodically began

beating me in the face, head, and nose

striking blow after blow

she filed a report with the police. This

report was submitted, and after that

there were many more scandals involving this Sokolov, but

really

he was some kind of sick pervert, I mean

we understand, family life

people

can have conflicts, but when

A person takes

an iron, damn it, heats it up, ties him up, his own

life in this cohabiting relationship movement

reenactors, definitely enthusiasts

who like dressing up in all kinds of military uniforms

from old times, reenacting

historical events. Nikita says they’re all

crazy, but that’s absolutely not true.

There are many of them there, and most of them

are completely normal people. But this guy, in

particular, somewhere in France or

Spain, they came for one of their reenactments

of the Napoleonic Wars and killed a horse. I mean,

the guy was clearly some kind of

protected, mentally unstable

unbalanced sadist. He was running around with this

red-hot iron, and the police did nothing.

And now there’s a discussion going on there, and here too

there was a discussion at the foundation too, but she

filed a statement.

So, not secretly, not because—then later

in an article I wrote that this woman filed a complaint in

2008 over a death threat, but here it wasn’t

a death threat. But this should still

work the same way: a woman comes to the police,

an 18-year-old girl at the time, and says,

“You know, this man tied me to

a chair and waved a hot iron in front of my

face, after which he beat me while I was tied to

the chair.” How could this person have remained

free?

How could this person have remained at

the university? There were a huge number of

complaints against him there.

Conflicts, fights during lectures—well, because

the whole system was protecting him.

Why was it protecting him? Because he

loves Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin

because he is a member of the Military-Historical

Society, because with this Karpachyov

he entered this kind of

political and ideological nomenklatura (the Soviet-style ruling establishment)

creative and academic—specifically Putinist

nomenklatura. There aren’t that many of them,

a marginal

media support crew. Sokolov was an important

part of it. That’s why our state

is structured this way: if you

serve them, then please—go ahead, brand people with an iron

if you like.

Burn whoever you want. If back then he

hadn’t gotten drunk but had gone out sober

to dispose of those arms and had thrown out first

the arms

and then thrown out the head, I have no doubt

that he would have remained completely unpunished, and

already we can see some kind of sympathy

toward him from the sidelines.

At first, this whole state-aligned camp

got scared: well, we’re not going to

defend some lunatic who

cut a person into pieces and ran off

to dump them in the river. At first they

distanced themselves from him.

But now it’s more like, well, overall,

you know, it’s not so clear-cut, maybe

she provoked him, maybe he was in a state of

temporary insanity—let’s feel sorry for him now, glasses

for him, let’s pass them to him, let’s watch 17 minutes

of him.

Members visit him from the detention center,

and help him there, and some boys

brought things too, some kind of support for him

was organized, and you can notice

there are definitely posters. And meanwhile, since

it was all raked together, you can read it better now:

“By law, I am entitled to this. I made a mistake once

in my life, one time, in my private life.”

Well yes, except no one tried to burn through

someone with an iron. In 2018, Maxim

Reznik

read it out in the legislature and sent a St. Petersburg

inquiry to Golikova in connection with this

inappropriate behavior by this Sokolov,

in connection with the fact that someone there was killed—or not killed—

some student, but nobody cared

because Sokolov, Putin, Karpachyov—they

are all friends with each other, and to hell with

everyone else.

You have no right to criticize our

wonderful Professor Napoleon. Does he really need

to have

to cut off someone’s arms

or someone’s legs before only then

something starts moving somehow?

The machine starts turning, and at the same time people come to him.

It’s not that anyone is demanding

that he be shot immediately. Like any

other person, he deserves at least some

lawful conditions of detention in prison, and any other

person deserves the right to a defense,

of course. But please explain to me

why everyone else, in St. Petersburg,

which is famous for the fact that they

grab opposition activists and torture them

with electric shocks, and then, as you may remember

or have probably read, in those cases they say

“You know, those electrical marks on

the person’s face and body—it wasn’t us beating him

with a stun gun, he was bitten

by insects.” And the court says, yes, yes, yes, he was

bitten by insects. Yet Sokolov—Napoleon and

the dismemberer—is being held in normal conditions, and

already now

he is being given some kind of—not exactly

sympathetic treatment, but they are somehow keeping him

according to the law.

But all the other ordinary people—according

to the law, supposedly—while the rest are tortured

with electric shocks. But with Sokolov, everything

has to be completely different. We have

some strange thing happening with

YouTube—a normal number of people were watching

it.

I was told that some kind of

freeze happened. I think that in fact our

our wonderful friends from the Kremlin are

testing some new technologies.

the fight against us may be connected with

the fact that they are artificially inflating the number of

views and waiting for YouTube to

freeze us out; perhaps that was connected to

that freeze-up. 25,000 people are

watching live. I’ll say a couple more

words after all, because I really

liked what was happening with

Maxim Galkin

You probably remember that he and I

had this discussion where he

kept teasing and mocking me in every possible way, and I

was arguing with him there too

because some time ago Maxim Galkin

was talking about how

what a good, professional,

perfectly normal host Vladimir Solovyov is

Let’s recall that video. With all my

respect for the work of Alexei

Navalny

but when he accuses my

television colleague Vladimir

Solovyov over his real estate, I

have a question: why are you accusing him?

He brings colossal ratings to his

channel. His channel, Russia-1,

sells advertising at much higher prices thanks

to Solovyov’s existence on air; it

owes him, regardless of whether

it’s a state channel or not, to pay

him big money, and Solovyov has the right

to use that money to buy real estate. One

year later—and I’m not gloating one bit—I want

to say that Maxim, to his credit, really

did well, because when he

went on one of his tours, he

was in the city of Novosibirsk

and there he was no longer saying that

Vladimir Solovyov is some kind of good

person earning great money there

He says that Vladimir Solovyov and people like him

lie endlessly on air

they talk endlessly about Ukraine

and he said what, unfortunately, he had not

said before: that in Russia there is

censorship. Let’s watch this really

excellent clip, 1 minute 18 seconds

of a great

honest speech by Maxim Galkin, and

[music]

help Ukrainians... Right now we have

censorship; not everything can be, not everything can be

said from a television screen, and I

understand them, because, you know, right now while I

can phrase it this way

when did we have it? It’s just

of course, one leader—well done—already 20

years, almost 20 years, yes, he has already been in

power and has already surpassed the previous one there

Naturally, he’s bored with those world

leaders who, naïve people, keep changing

every four years, while here we’ve already managed to

have an entire generation of people be born

grow up, finish school, have children of their own, and all

of it happened under Putin. They don’t even know

that there could be another president. They

don’t see it as a position; the office itself, as

it’s usually called, has become the most boring thing

messenger of darkness... We’re bored, we have problems

Here, you know, pensions have been messed with,

and on other scales he is deliberately conquering

America... I’m very glad that now even Maxim

Galkin seems to think that Vladimir Solovyov is not

bringing the channel money and ratings and so on

but simply keeps spouting endless

nonsense about Ukraine, which all of us are very

tired of, because all of us already have

the feeling as if we live in Ukraine

Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine—it’s the most

important thing, apparently, even more important than Berlin

What’s disgusting is that at Maxim

Solovyov—sorry, at Maxim Galkin

after this, who attacked him? Vladimir Solovyov

Vladimir Solovyov, Dmitry Kiselyov, and also

there’s this Artyom Sheinin

he’s somehow the most, out of all of them,

the most [__] guy. Together they

came out, condemned Maxim Galkin, and

said that there is no censorship on television

Well, what can I say? I’m very, very

glad, without any sarcasm, that

Maxim Galkin, if not yet on

television, then at least not yet on his

Instagram, but already when meeting people

is telling them the truth, and these videos of his

have simply stirred everyone up; people really

liked them because people have missed

the word “truth” coming from those

people who usually somehow

smooth over the sharp edges and say that this is not

censorship, just a great way of making

money. I hope that

with Maxim Galkin this will begin and will continue

very well going forward. Thank you

so much to everyone who watched this live stream

See you next Thursday. Bye