Navalny at 20:18. Broadcast #005, 18.05

[music]

In Moscow, it is 20:18. This means that

we are live on the Navalny Live channel.

I’m Alexei Navalny, I’m with you, I’m here

to answer your questions,

and talk about the events that have taken place

over the past week. If you want

to ask me something, please write

with the hashtag

#Navalny, and probably the topic I’ll

obviously start with, because it was

not just the news of the day, and not

only for me — it was the main story

of the day across all the news outlets:

the appearance of a wonderful new

video blogger, Alisher Burkhanovich Usmanov.

One of Russia’s leading oligarchs,

with a fortune of, I think, $15

billion — well, maybe $15 or $13 billion,

according to the latest Forbes list, still $15 billion.

He actually recorded a video, a video

for me, 12 minutes long. Maybe you

watched it, maybe you didn’t finish it; we

made a one-minute highlight reel for you from

those 12 minutes. Let’s watch it and then

discuss it. Please roll it.

Grumbling about the internet? I have a much deeper

relationship with it than you do. I don’t

use it — I develop it. Of the two of us,

you’re the criminal, and most importantly, you’re lying when you say I don’t

pay taxes.

You lie about where you pay taxes, and in general, do you

even pay taxes? But I do pay taxes,

and only in Russia. I also feel like

saying that what I sense is terrible envy —

the envy of a loser and a failed businessman who

started his business with kickbacks on petty

deals. I just want to explain this to you

so you won’t be jealous. I bought everything

I have, including a wonderful

boat and a plane, because I live

a happy life, Lyosha, unlike you.

Although, in principle, it’s impossible to understand how

one can compare salaries in Russia and

the United States, economies

that differ by a factor of ten. You will still

have to answer to me, Lyosha, and

your attempts to insult me are like a pug barking at

an elephant. Shame on you, Alexei

Navalny.

What a self-made businessman. Literally

the Russian Elon Musk, the Russian Bill Gates.

He earned everything with these very hands, all by himself,

personally built all the mining and processing

plants, paid all his taxes in Russia,

and pays enormous salaries to his workers.

It’s enough to bring tears to your eyes. What a

wonderful man. It’s interesting

that all the stories told by Russian

oligarchs about how they became oligarchs

and about what they do in Russia are

more or less the same, and Usmanov

demonstrated that they always sound

roughly like this: “Well, I was an ordinary Soviet

person, and then for a billion dollars

I very honestly bought some factories.” And where

did you get those billions of dollars? Where

did that money come from? “My friends and I

got a loan,” Usmanov tells us — $15

billion — and very honestly bought something. But in

order to get a $15 billion

loan, you probably need collateral

of $3 billion. Is anyone going to give a $15 billion loan

like that? No one gives out that kind of loan,

but somehow they managed it.

So yesterday you had nothing, and

today you’re buying, for $1.5 billion or $2

billion, some mining and processing

plant, and we’re supposed to consider that

a satisfactory story that we

should listen to and say, yes, yes, yes,

what an honest businessman. I have here

a huge number of questions about

Usmanov, and I’ve divided them into

these

thematic groups, and I really do want

to respond to this in detail, because this is

of course something that goes a bit beyond

the bounds of what usually happens in

Russia, and it seems to me fairly

symbolic, first of all. Well, what is this

in terms of

form? That in itself is a separate thing that raises

interest. I had what you might call

an anthropological reaction: I watched this video

and was simply amazed, because it was either

the 1990s had returned to us, or some

big parody of the 1990s. But the man

is sitting there completely seriously, and he

knows he’s broadcasting, he wants to broadcast to

an audience of millions, and he says, “You,

Lyosha, must answer to me. You

must apologize to me.” And this very

format of address — you know, “I’m

the most important one here. I’m not ashamed of the fact

that I’m used to intimidating everyone,”

I know

that everyone is afraid of me, and even through

the internet, you look at me and are afraid,

because I’m so tough.” At the same time, these

same people, this same Usmanov — look at any

video of him at some Putin council meeting,

and all these oligarchs are just

lackeys who tremble, who

bow and scrape there obsequiously,

giggling

before the godlike Putin and Medvedev, but when it comes

to everyone else, this is exactly how

they address them: “Be afraid of me. You must

apologize to me.” Well, we are not afraid.

No one is going to apologize to you,

because we know who you are, and

we will answer all

of these

statements of yours. So what is this? Well,

why? A very common question is: why did they

do this? Indeed, Usmanov is

most certainly not the most public

He’s an oligarch, and he gives interviews quite rarely.

He’s trying, well, sort of like this—

probably less than the other oligarchs, but—

I have this kind of

explanation:

that this is,

of course, a request from the Kremlin, possibly

from Medvedev, possibly from Putin himself, in

order to, well, simply shift the discussion.

They don’t want there to be a confrontation

with Navalny—but with a generalized Navalny, meaning all of us.

All of us are against Medvedev and Putin. All of us are asking

Medvedev and Putin questions about their

corruption. They want it to become

some kind of clash between Navalny and

Usmanov. Better that he criticize oligarchs

than criticize us. That’s exactly why

notice that on his channel it

is actually titled that way—the PR people

for Usmanov titled the video “Alisher Usmanov

against Alexei Navalny.” They want

to shift it. Guys, that’s not going to work.

Of course, Alexei Navalny is against

Alisher Usmanov. Of course, I consider him

an extremely harmful person, an oligarch

who contributes nothing useful. But

we will not forget that

in this whole

framework of ours, and in our investigation,

Usmanov is simply one episode, yes.

This man gave a bribe, gave a bribe

in the form of a luxurious mansion, and we know what for.

And we’ll talk about that a little later, but this is

just one episode. He’s simply one of the

oligarchs who carries money into the

Kremlin’s coffers, and we remember that

the main villains here are Medvedev and

everyone knows that, in that sense—

they will not

succeed. Though we would gladly

argue with Usmanov himself, and as for

Usmanov, we have plenty to

discuss. So, what is this essentially?

We’ve discussed the form, we’ve discussed why it was done.

What is it in essence? As it seems to me,

the Kremlin asked Usmanov to make

this response, and after that, clearly, his PR people

and Usmanov himself, who seems to me

to have gotten a bit carried away, came up with their own

version of how it should look.

It turned out very interestingly because

essentially it came out as this kind of, well,

oligarchic

manifesto: “We are so

great, we believe that, basically, we are

real, legitimate businessmen. You do not

have the right to ask us any

questions, and if you do ask

questions, then you’ll answer to us and

you’ll be apologizing. Today on Twitter I saw

this very apt thought: that this

address is not to Navalny; it is an address

to the population: this is how we will

talk to you if you

talk too much, if you ask

too many questions—well, obvious

questions about where this money came from,

obvious questions about how, in Russia at all,

oligarchs can exist in a fairly

poor country that only recently

emerged from

socialism—how these oligarchs appeared, and

what the source of their wealth is.

At the same time, again, no one is generalizing.

We understand that oligarchs, wealthy people,

are different. There are people who

earned their money completely honestly. Yes, they are also

billionaires. I always give, for example,

the guys from Yandex as an example. Well, not

“guys” exactly—I don’t know any of them personally, I’ve

seen them a couple of times, but

they really are billionaires, and they really are

the kind of billionaires whom we

all respect very much, and to whom we say,

“Thank you very much for creating,”

for example, Yandex. But to people like Usmanov,

we do not want to say thank you, and we never will. But

their manifesto amounts to this: that we all

owe them.

And even this address, apparently,

was recorded on that very boat

he talks about—you can see the drawn curtains there,

that kind of furniture, and several

people wrote to us saying it was recorded on the yacht, on

that very yacht, Dilbar, which costs €400

million, and just today news came out that

—it’s on the screen right now—saying that it was

recognized as one of the best yachts in the world

among vessels with a displacement of over 3,000 tons (metric), that is,

among the very largest yachts, Usmanov’s yacht

won an award. He bought it for €400

million. He got that money from these mining and

processing plants, where the average

salary—which he also talks to me about, saying,

“we pay this kind of salary there, people should

be satisfied”—is

38,000

38,000 rubles a month (about €400 / $430), that’s the average salary there,

for people who toil there in hazardous

working conditions.

These miners—and he sits on

a yacht, recording these addresses, and

says, “You won’t prove that I’m a dishonest

man. Everyone, apologize to me. I

pay you a wonderful salary: 38,000

rubles.” Well, Alisher Burkhanovich,

that is exactly why you have a fortune of

$15 billion—because you do not

pay proper taxes or proper wages to these

people. You cannot buy a yacht for €400 million

if you pay your workers 38,000 rubles

because it is impossible to live on 38,000 rubles.

And no matter how brazenly you

tell us that this is all wonderful and that you’re

somehow ennobling people in poverty—this whole

system, where the authorities allow it,

the oligarchs profit from it, while the people

remain poor—we will

to talk about this. Despite all these

your

manifestos, the next thing I’m often asked about is

which I get asked a lot about:

whether I see this as a

threat. Well, it’s framed in such a way

that of course it looks like a threat. I

absolutely do see it as a threat. Another

matter is that I’m not afraid. Quite a lot of these

swindlers come out with

these kinds of threatening statements. It is

certainly a threat. But if he has billions—

if someone believes that

he siphoned money out of the Russian budget,

essentially stole it from us—this is

national wealth. The ore that

they dig out of the ground belongs to me

and to you and to everyone—it belongs to all of us.

But if they think that he has

$15 billion and a yacht on which, as

he says, he’s enjoying life, then should I

be afraid of him? No, I’m not afraid at all,

not one bit. But I absolutely do see it as a

threat. My family sees it as a threa—

but nevertheless, we will talk about it, and I

will not stop talking about it.

I won’t stop.

As for a response: I’m simply leaving tomorrow morning

to open several campaign offices on the Volga. We

need to open five or six offices,

so I won’t be able to record a truly immediate response,

but of course

at the beginning of next week we will

publish that response. Besides that, today quite a few

media outlets

wrote about it—I saw RBC

and TV Rain saying they were ready to organize

some kind of debate, and asking whether I’m afraid to come

to such a debate. I was asked today

many times already: no, I’m not afraid. I’m addressing

Alisher Burkhanovich Usmanov in particular

formally and respectfully, and I say: yes, I am ready to take part

in such a debate. Best of all, let’s hold it right

here. Come here to the Anti-Corruption Foundation

and we will once again tell you

what we know about you.

Come, sit right here next to me, and we’ll

discuss every issue, starting with criminal cases

in Uzbekistan and ending with boats,

salaries, and who pays taxes there.

Let’s do it. If

you are not afraid of this dialogue, if you are ready

to answer not in the format of

some YouTube video, but in a debate format,

then please—I’m not afraid of that. I’d also like to draw

by the way

everyone’s attention and remind

the wonderful Alisher Burkhanovich

Usmanov that it is here in Russia that he

is so rude to everyone and records videos like these. There,

it’s ‘Alexei, you must answer to me,’ and

basically, ‘all of you listen to me.’ But when he

was buying the Arsenal football club, I just

looked it up now, and he

answered like a meek little rabbit, like a timid little girl,

obediently answering all the questions from the British media—37

questions from *The Guardian*, where he was

asked about rape allegations and all

the criminal cases. He answered every single

question nicely and didn’t talk back to anyone at all.

Why? Because he is afraid of them. He

is afraid of English judges. He is afraid of

English public opinion. He

answered those questions because

Arsenal fans were against his purchase

of the football club. But here, in

Russia, he comes here and acts like he owns the place,

thinking he can be rude to anyone.

When he goes back there—to Switzerland

or to the United Kingdom, where he

spends most of the year—there he will once again

sit quietly and answer very politely

questions

from the public and from the media.

My friends, our task is to create a country like that

and to conduct ourselves in such a way

that all these oligarchs—from Usmanov to

Abramovich, from, I don’t know, Roldugin to

God knows who else—all of them, in fact any

people, would be obliged to answer here just as

thoroughly and diligently as they do in

the United Kingdom. Here, they

talk about how they and Putin will tighten

their belts, while inside the country where they

make their money, they treat everyone with open contempt,

demonstratively so. But where they

invest their money, they become these

nice, pleasant guys. We must behave

differently. It depends on us. Then they will

record different videos—less arrogant ones—and

not from a yacht worth €400 million, but from

some other places. We must conduct

ourselves differently and demand from them

one last but very important thing. At the end

of his video, Usmanov says that

Navalny is trying to prove that in

Russia all business is somehow bad,

corrupt, whereas business in Russia is not

like that. This is important: no

Usmanov is not Russian business,

and I absolutely do not consider him

part of business. I do not consider him part

of normal business. I do not consider him part

of capitalism, if you like, because he

is harmful to business. He

is the opposite of capitalism. In normal

capitalism, no Alisher Usmanov would ever

have emerged, and we do not see this kind of

oligarch in Germany, in the United States, or anywhere

with a developed market economy. They

cannot appear there. And here we draw,

of course, an absolute Chinese wall

between normal business, which

unfortunately in Russia is barely

surviving, and even wealthy

people who created something new,

who brought public benefit, and

people like Usmanov, who have done no such thing.

essentially nothing except what they acquired as

their own property one way or another. And yes, I

consider it to have happened through privatization deals,

because Usmanov got it from

Gazprom. He thinks privatization

only means buying directly from the state, but when you

buy from Gazprom Invest, that is also

the same kind of privatization, the same kind of

illegal one. We draw a Chinese wall here. I

do not consider him representative of business. I do not think

he has the right to speak on behalf of

Russian business. He harms it. Because of

people like Usmanov, business in Russia

develops badly. So, let me

see what questions there are here.

Was he imprisoned for rape or

not? Well,

fortunately, I was probably not in

the same cell with him in an Uzbek prison, but

the story about rape comes from a book by

the British ambassador to Uzbekistan at the time,

and this man is a historian by profession.

He is recounting that history now, and I fully trust

the British ambassador to Uzbekistan

who described all of this and who clearly

wrote that Usmanov was imprisoned, among other things,

because of rape. I don't know.

I don't have any confirmation of that

apart from that book, but I trust the book

quite a lot. So if Usmanov wants

to argue about this, let him argue not with

me, but with the former British ambassador.

Did Usmanov inflate the likes? Yes, I saw it on

his channel where he posted that video.

Of course he inflated the likes. Well, what do

you think they were going to do?

If all their lives they have... Well, of course they

are going to inflate likes, but again, it's

ridiculous. They thought they would come onto

the internet and that here they could, basically, fool everyone

the same way they did on

Channel One (Russia's main state TV channel), but people here are a little

different, and all their manipulations are immediately

visible, visible to everyone, so for them here

it will be... We can see that there is an active

Kremlin intervention in the internet, in

particular in

YouTube over the last few weeks,

especially over the last week with these

wonderful clips

by Ali Wox and so on, but I don't think

they are going to have an easy time here. Why

does the UK cover for all of them? Listen,

the UK acts within

its own logic. They see that there is

a country whose population, for some reason,

allowed itself to be robbed, a population

that somehow, well,

allowed a small group of people to take all

the money from oil and gas sales, and the authorities

of this country

are doing exactly the same thing and hauling

billions into the UK. So what are they

supposed to do? Stand at the border

and say, 'No, you are mistreating Russian

people, so we will not accept your money'?

Of course they won't do that. They

say... well, they are somewhat squeamish

about all of this,

but money is money, and it keeps flowing into

the country. So oligarch Usmanov brought it in. Yes, this

money—they understand that this money is

more or less stolen. But it is not the job of

the British to fight for our happiness.

The next topic I wanted to discuss

is something that, of course, was to be expected,

but it absolutely enraged me:

the sentence handed down to Yuri Kuly. It was

the first sentence issued in connection with

the March 26 rally. Please show the photograph.

Here you can see

the moment for which, quite literally,

this man received 8 months in a penal settlement

colony. So you should not think that

a colony

is some kind of resort or a very light

punishment—it is quite close to prison.

Most importantly, he did nothing. Yuri Kuly is simply

an honest man who

came to the rally because he had every

right to do so. And yes, at some point, when

as you probably saw, or were there yourself,

the police completely unlawfully

rushed in to disperse everyone—yes, the man braced

his hand against a police officer, and today he was given

8 months in a penal

settlement colony.

Why so quickly? Because, first of all, it is

extremely important for them to intimidate everyone. It is extremely

important for them that no one come to the rally

on June 12, and now, of course, they will start

saying, 'See? Don't go to the rally.'

After all, they can't squeeze all of us,

they can't crush everyone, so they grab one

random person, like this

actor, and demonstratively jail him for nothing

in order to frighten people.

Cases are now being opened every day. They are connected not

only with rallies; they are connected, in general, with

the expression of independent

opinion. There are already so many cases now

connected with, I don't know, likes and reposts

that even newspapers have stopped writing about them.

And the main protection for people like Kuly

and everyone else, of course, is that

we must not be afraid. We must, in

particular, continue going out to these

rallies. Yes, there is this

damn awful lottery, this hellish, devilish

situation in which we understand that at any

mass event they can seize one person

and just like that give him 8

months, like Kuly. That exists. But the question for

us is: will we be afraid or not? I am not afraid. I

now want even more to go on June 12,

because I see this

absolutely innocent

normal, honest Russian man who

they just threw him in prison, this crook and

the interesting thing is

the thing that personally affects me here is

that the main prosecution witness

at the trial against Kulya

was this pathetic drunk who

splashed me with brilliant green (a common antiseptic dye in Russia), or rather

some kind of muck mixed with brilliant green, while lying in wait

for me near

the office. And there’s nothing there — there’s no case at all.

No case whatsoever. I also got a lot of

questions: tell us how the criminal case is progressing.

After all, Putin said

that he does not accept political violence.

Yes, United Russia said, using this case as an example,

that of course any

extremists from any side must be

punished. The Moscow police headquarters and the Interior Ministry said

yes, yes, yes, we are opening a criminal case, there will be

an investigation, absolutely. And a lot of people wrote to me then,

and journalists said,

well, after statements like that, of course there will be

an investigation — someone will be jailed, or

at least something will happen. So my lawyer,

Vadim

Kobzev, went to the police the day before yesterday.

Nothing is happening. No one is questioning me.

I have not been recognized as a victim. I said, well,

listen, go and find out, take a look at

whatever case materials there are. I’m going to show now

a fragment of the complaint that

he

wrote after his visit.

So this is a legal fact:

what we established is that, first of all, as the victim

I still have not been recognized; no examination has

been carried out. I have medical documents,

a whole pile of these medical documents already,

from Russia and from Spain. To this day

my right eye can barely see. These documents have not been seized,

and no investigative actions whatsoever

are being carried out. The funniest part is this:

the latest claim is that the identities of the attackers have not

been established. And that’s wonderful, because

on the internet they have already

been identified — photos, surnames, addresses,

where they all live. This happened

several weeks ago, but the Russian

police officially still do not know

who these attackers are. Well, this just

shows the connection: this attacker was a

false witness in Kulya’s case. That is, he

helped put an innocent citizen in prison

and in return receives immunity from criminal

prosecution, which gives him the ability

to keep breaking the law. That is the whole point

of this government: you can steal

billions, you can do whatever you want.

How many cases have there been where they run over

people at crosswalks, drive drunk,

and every time there’s a scandal around it

in the media, but nothing happens because

they work for the authorities. They have

immunity, they have permission to do

whatever they want. But when it comes to us,

for any independent word, suddenly around you

someone is already running around with some kind of report

for at least an administrative

offense. This once again shows

how important it is for us, including

to go out to rallies, and also not

to stay silent, so that all this власть

can see how many of us there are, and how many people

are not going to stay silent. A question from

Andrei Voronov: Will you be able to help

Kulya?

As far as I understand, as far as I know, he has

quite a good defense. Unfortunately,

he was simply

deceived. He was illegally held for several

days and was denied access to a lawyer.

As far as I understand, even his relatives

were not notified, and so he was basically

set up, as they say. He was told:

sign that you are guilty and you will get

a suspended sentence. Today at sentencing he

said exactly that. They asked him: why did you

admit guilt and agree to the special procedure (a simplified trial process)?

He said: well, because I was promised that

I would get a suspended sentence. Well, as usual, these liars

always lie. They deceived him. They

promised him a suspended sentence — just confess to everything.

He confessed, and only after that

was a lawyer allowed to see him, and he

of course received a real prison term. But

his defense is good now. I do not

doubt the prospects of this case in the

ECHR (European Court of Human Rights). The other thing is — and honestly,

I’ll say this — he will win at the ECHR, but it is quite

likely only after he has already spent 8

months in this penal settlement

colony. And I think his lawyers themselves

will do that. But if they come to us, to me, for

that kind of help, we will certainly

provide him and everyone else with all the help

they need. And of course we will

try to fight for every person, and

many human rights organizations

provide that kind of assistance. The next topic

is the rally about

the renovation program, from which I

was escorted out together with my whole family.

There were a huge number of questions before Usmanov

and before Kulya. I had actually planned to make this

the main topic, because so many people

are asking. It is actually very important.

First, the rally went well. Quite a

lot of people — no, not quite a lot, a great many

people, over 20,000, came. That is

wonderful. They came to express their protest.

They once again documented and showed

and confirmed that this is not a situation where

everyone agrees with this renovation program. Moscow City Hall

is lying. If 20 — 20,000

people came out, then many, many times

more people are dissatisfied

with what is happening. We are now conducting

a large sociological survey across Moscow.

in order to show some kind of

real picture. Whatever the actual data

turn out to be, that’s what we’ll publish, even if

the results end up contradicting

what I’m saying—though I doubt it. We’ll

publish this poll. We’ll see the real

public opinion. Because no one at

VTsIOM (the Russian Public Opinion Research Center), of course, can be trusted, so the rally

happened, fine. So why was I

removed? Why did this whole scandal arise over whether it was a

political rally or not? It’s

quite

simple. For several years, together with

Sergei Mitrokhin, who is now one

of the leaders of Yabloko (a Russian liberal political party), I headed an

organization called the Committee for the Protection of Muscovites. I

was at, well, probably hundreds of rallies

devoted to infill development

including the resettlement

of five-story apartment blocks, rallies of those who want

to be rehoused, and rallies of those who do not want

to be rehoused. So I’ve long known and

understood how this works, and I’m very

calm about these kinds of

conflicts when they happen. So,

guys, let’s once again run a

thought experiment—my favorite

exercise. You are the Moscow mayor’s office. I am your loyal

advisor and PR man. I come to you and

say: Hello, Sergei

Semyonovich. Everyone is unhappy with our

renovation program. Several thousand people have already joined the Facebook groups.

There will

definitely be a major rally

against this renovation program. This rally will be

scandalous, and at this rally everyone will

be calling for our resignation, and this rally

will be noticed in the Kremlin, and they’ll

really tear into us. It’s quite possible that this

rally will undermine our chances and shave

a few percentage points off us in the

upcoming mayoral election. Putin will understand

that this whole renovation issue, this rally,

will cost him a few percentage points, and

so they’ll be furious with us there, and

there will be a scandal. So, Sergei Semyonovich,

let’s think up what the

situation with this rally should be. Well, the solution is obvious:

if you can’t stop a protest, you need to

try to

lead it. So you just, well,

look for the initiative group, plant

some people in it—and we saw some

strange former PR people from Prokhorov’s team

or current deputy ministers from Tula

Region—and you go to them and

you start, at the same time, a little

to intimidate them, a little to bribe them,

a little to deceive them. You say: we’ll

give you permission, but please

just keep politics out of it. And I’ve discussed and observed this a million times.

Every time

there’s a rally, even some courtyard protest against

the head of the district administration, someone

from the initiative group, or the deputy head of the district administration, immediately shows up

and says: well, we understand your problems,

but please, all these politicians—

they’re trying to get publicity off this issue,

don’t, don’t let that happen under any circumstances.

We’ll solve your problems, and your, say,

Ivan Petrovich’s personal problems—we’ll try

to solve them too. Just please, without all this

politicking. Otherwise some local

deputies who want to get elected will come, and on

the back of your misfortune they’ll try to promote themselves.

So there’s no need to politicize it. And here

exactly the same thing happened. And this

should be treated calmly. It does not

mean that this initiative group contains

some kind of villains. Well, I mean, there are a couple of

real villains and crooks there, yes—you already know their

last names. But that’s inevitable; essentially it’s

inevitable: any rally, any protest

movement, one way or another, gets

hijacked. People are weak; it’s fairly easy

to go up to someone and say: listen, you

make sure they don’t speak

with harsh criticism, don’t demand

resignations, and God forbid they mention

Putin—and in return, you personally will get

a better apartment before the relocation. It’s hard

for many people to resist that kind of

prospect. That’s why this whole

theme of ‘depoliticization’ was imposed.

They were all running around there, in all that

commotion, when different people

came rushing up and started giving instructions

to the police. Some guy comes up and

starts shouting too: we didn’t agree

to this, politicians should or shouldn’t

speak—but I thought he was just some guy from

the initiative group. But later, in

the photos, I saw that it was the deputy head

of the Security Department, Chernikov,

I think that was his surname. So, he was

directly in charge there.

Again, there’s nothing especially terrible

about this—it’s a natural thing. You just need

to distinguish the maneuvering of the initiative group from

the people who came out in general.

And naturally, the Moscow mayor’s office will continue

its attempts at what they call

‘depoliticization.’

It’s not that the mayor’s office or the Kremlin are

literally afraid of the rally itself. So 20,000 people came out—

fine. They’ll disperse, they

will definitely, 100 percent, disperse. They are not

afraid of the rally in and of itself; they’re afraid

that it will be harder to get re-elected. They’re afraid

of their ratings falling. Because

it’s one thing to rig things when you have 45%

support; it’s another thing to rig them with

25%—that’s not always possible. They’re afraid

that more and more people will

stop liking them. They’re afraid that—

wow, 25,000 people turned out, and in the

resolution it will say: we demand

Sobyanin’s resignation, we demand resignation

Putin, because Putin is responsible. Well,

we remember that. And anyway, how did we find out

about the renovation program? We saw it on Channel One

(Russia’s main state TV channel): they showed a meeting between Sobyanin

and Putin where they announced to us that, basically,

there would be renovation in Moscow. So this is

an agreement between two people, and they bear

equal responsibility, naturally.

The authorities want this not to be mentioned; they

do not want

the number of people asking this question

to grow. It’s like: let’s judge

all this without politics—just the residents

of five-story apartment blocks will discuss it all. Well, that’s

something else—residents of five-story blocks, and 2 trillion rubles (about 2 trillion RUB),

this does not concern only Moscow, because

this money will be taken from Moscow’s budget.

It concerns everyone watching right now.

If you’re sitting somewhere in Khabarovsk

late at night or early in the morning, watching

this broadcast, it concerns you no less than

it concerns me. Because where did these 2 trillion

rubles come from? Well, that’s where they came from—they were taken out of

your Khabarovsk through this

unfair financial system,

and brought here. And now they’re deciding

what to do with them in connection with renovation.

So once again, there is no need to worry too much

about, well, the depoliticization

of the organizers, members of the organizing

committees, and speakers being chosen

by vote. Democracy always helps.

There is always someone dissatisfied, but at least

it is clear who people voted for.

Don’t let yourselves be deceived, but

at the same time, don’t tear your hair out over

the fact that, my God, somehow the Moscow mayor’s office

got involved in one rally. There is nothing

terrible about that. I want to say

something important: we, the Anti-Corruption Foundation

(FBK), are filing a lawsuit tomorrow against

the Moscow government over the renovation issue,

because

pay attention to this resolution

of the Moscow government under which voting is now

taking place in the Active Citizen system

(a Moscow e-government voting platform). They tell us that however

people vote, that is how it will be. At the same time,

the voting is being actively falsified—we

see it, we simply see it directly.

For example,

these multifunctional service centers

announced that on the first day

30,000 people voted—or whatever it was, 20,000 or

30,000 people—and every single one of them

voted in favor of

renovation. Yes, not a single vote against.

Moscow City Hall—well, that is impossible. It is

statistically impossible. There is simply no way

that thousands of people

could vote and every last one of them be in favor.

So we understand that the vote is being fabricated.

But please bring back

the previous image, if possible. In the

resolution it says that this is a

resolution on taking Muscovites’ opinions into account.

If you read it carefully, you

will see that this vote

does not obligate anyone to do anything. Even if

entire buildings vote against it, the Moscow mayor’s office

is not obliged to follow that. It takes opinions into account,

but makes the decision independently. Well,

it “takes them into account” somehow: we took your opinion into account,

but decided you are an idiot and that we know better

whether your building should be demolished or not.

This system obviously violates

property owners’ rights, because, well,

there is an established procedure: a general meeting

of homeowners. That procedure

is mandatory. And all these votes on

Active Citizen—

Alexei, and we are filing suit because

they are deceiving people. Because you cannot

use voting on Active Citizen

as the final expression of

the city residents’ opinion. Besides, we have also now

launched a survey in some buildings.

In certain buildings that are slated

for demolition, we are simply going apartment by apartment and

will be ready to publish the raw data,

whatever is needed, and then we will see how closely

the voting on Active Citizen

matches the vote that we conduct

through this fieldwork method.

We will carry it out. I doubt

that everything there will match. Questions—

for some reason I do not see any; they are not sending me questions.

Are there none?

No questions? And he shakes his head

and says—writes to me in all caps—there are no

questions. The problem has been solved in an amazing

way: I have been talking about it for 20

minutes, and there are no questions. Even though it seems to affect

several hundred thousand

people. In any case,

I think I have covered the topic in considerable detail,

and we at the Anti-Corruption Foundation will

be actively working on this and

will expose corruption in this area

as well. I urge everyone—well yes, they are writing

that there are no questions. Everyone

is only calling for Sobyanin

to be put in jail. I can say that I believe

not everyone should be thrown straight into prison; everyone

should first be sent to the defendant’s bench.

That would be more proper. At the very

least, this whole renovation issue

certainly deserves criminal

investigation—apparently a place on the defendants’ bench.

Another large block

of questions that came in concerns the blocking

of websites in

Ukraine, and this affects me very

directly, because I not only

consistently speak out against blocking in

Russia, but I myself am also

being blocked. And, well, there are many questions about how I

feel about the fact that this is being done in

I feel exactly the same about Ukraine: I’m against it.

In general.

There is a lot of data, a lot of

research showing that as a result of

the blockings in Ukraine—well,

first, they won’t be enforced,

and second, they will damage the economies

of both Russia and Ukraine. Yes, absolutely.

And if the task of the Ukrainian government

is to inflict economic damage on Russian

companies—well, damage will indeed be done.

Many people here think that, well,

sanctions from

Ukraine are nonsense, that it’s an insignificant country—

that’s what people say. Foolish people who haven’t

looked at a map, people who haven’t even

read Wikipedia and don’t realize that Ukraine has

a population of 45 million. Well,

let’s subtract Crimea and eastern Ukraine,

and even in the territory that

is controlled by official Kyiv, there are no fewer than 40 million

people. That’s a huge market. Russia has

144 million—so that’s roughly a third of that market—and our

internet companies, Yandex, VKontakte,

Mail.ru, were certainly counting on that market.

I think about 11% of VKontakte’s traffic

comes from Ukraine, and this will be

a major blow to Russian companies,

a big, serious economic blow.

Damage will be done.

The other thing is that comparable damage will also be done to

the Ukrainian economy as well, including that.

So I believe there should be no

blockings at all, even despite

whatever logic

they may have constructed for themselves in Kyiv.

Overall, for the Ukrainian government, the negative

effect on the Ukrainian economy will be

bad. It will be large, it will be

significant. Europe will criticize them,

and it will be absolutely right to do so.

International organizations will criticize them too.

I mean, so far we still haven’t

seen a single precedent where

blocking anything, especially such

large systems and search engines, has led to

anything good. Nothing good will

come of it. But I actually wanted to say something else.

Show me my favorite.

Volin on website blocking in Russia. Here.

Well—where did it go? There, please. And this is

the communications minister, Volin. Why did I say

he’s my favorite? Well, because this

man actively pushed for

TV Rain (an independent Russian TV channel) to be thrown off all cable networks.

This man

actively promoted and supports

blocking inside the country. So you see

what he says about blocking in Russia.

Now show what he says about

blocking in

Ukraine. It’s just—well, well, well—and a lot has already been said about it.

These quotes

have all been shown, but do you understand what’s

so astonishing? It’s not just that they

spout this kind of nonsense and

propaganda on television—they are trying to convince people on the internet too,

even the more advanced,

better-informed segment of citizens. They

despise people so much, think of them as such

cattle, that without even blinking they change

their position by

180 degrees. My blog, Alexei Navalny’s website,

was blocked twice, in 2014

and in 2015, and individual posts of mine

are blocked constantly. And all this

crooked lot was delighted by it and

said, yes, yes, yes, let’s block

Navalny, he’s such a terrible

extremist, yes, yes, yes, let’s block

Navalny because

well, he criticizes Putin, and you mustn’t

criticize the head of state,

you mustn’t criticize the authorities at all. There were many

different justifications.

They unblocked it fairly quickly.

We went to court. These were absolutely

illegal decisions, and we secured

the unblocking. Things had to be deleted, and all of them—

all this

officialdom

kept proving how proper and lawful it was to carry out

blockings, including of my websites in

Russia—thousands, tens of thousands

of blocked websites, pages, posts, and

so on. And now, when blockings are happening there, they

are publishing instructions on how to bypass

the blocks.

And again, what amazes me about this is

just how contemptuously they treat

Russian citizens. Fine, there are 140

million people, 80 million use the internet

regularly. But of those 80 million, at least 20

million—a substantial number of Russian citizens—

know quite well about the problems of

blocking, take part in this discussion,

and follow it. At the very least, the entire IT

industry, the whole community, is closely

engaged with it. There was just recently

an attempt to pass the Yarovaya law (a package of Russian anti-terror legislation), which also involved

a lot about blocking, and we were told how

important it is to block information in order to

fight terrorism—and then suddenly, bang, it

happens in Ukraine, and suddenly it’s a complete 180,

and all these 20 million people are like, my God,

how can you lie straight to our faces like this?

And they don’t care at all, not in the slightest. And these same

people then go somewhere, they

go back to their—I don’t know—they go back

to their families and behave like

normal people. They go to some

company, to friends, and think that they

should be treated like normal people, and

that is astonishing. I’m curious—

how do they even see themselves?

When their hypocrisy is simply

known to every person who simply

meets them on the street—how do they even...

They talk about it with their friends. Well, probably there,

they wink at each other and say, "Well, yeah, well..."

"And what about those fools? Today I was saying..."

Like, today I said this, haha, not bad.

We even just swapped Russia for

Ukraine, and my press secretary took one

and the same statement and put it out—haha, brilliant, we

did all of that.

Well, these are astonishing things,

astonishing things about this government—this

happens constantly on many issues.

But still, sorry for going on so long

about this—it never stops

amazing me, among other things. Well,

just from an anthropological point

of view—how can you lie like that constantly?

Why? Just stay quiet. You've already said so much.

So many falsehoods and lies about blocking in Russia, but

then let someone else talk about blocking in Ukraine.

Find another official for that.

You lied about Russia, and let him lie about

Ukraine. Let's split it up—a division of labor, lying

on different topics. But no, damn it, they keep

lying about the exact same thing. That is, of course,

remarkable.

So, now questions are coming in about khrushchyovkas (Soviet-era low-rise apartment blocks).

A huge number of them now. "I live in a

khrushchyovka, and on the contrary, I don't agree with you about demolition

because nobody is surveying people."

Listen, guys, I'm sure that if we

just count how many people do not want

demolition and how many people do want demolition, those

who want demolition will be more numerous. Well, I've often

talked about my wife's grandmother,

who lives in a five-story building. She wants

it demolished. They didn't include her in the program, and she

very much wants demolition. For quite a

long time, together with Mitrokhin,

I worked on cases like this.

There was the Phenolny Gorodok ("Phenol Town") case—those buildings there are not

five-story buildings but nine-story ones. They were

built using construction materials

that release phenol

for many years. You can't live there.

Children there

get sick. There are simply excessive levels above the maximum

permissible concentrations of phenol and other

substances. With these people, I organized rallies,

and pickets, and they even held hunger strikes.

That is, we

devoted many

months to this, and nobody demolished those buildings. They run around and

shout, "Guys, please relocate us, demolish

our homes." There are unsafe dormitories that

are saying, "Demolish us." Buildings spend years

begging: "Please, we can't live in

buildings like these." Fine, Moscow—but in

whatever city you've lived in, I'm sure you

know a five-story building in your city,

or a three-story one, or a barracks-style building. Even in

the near Moscow suburbs, barracks still exist, and

you know perfectly well

that they are in a monstrous condition, and in 2017

it is simply shameful and disgraceful for a country that

claims to be a great power

to still have barracks. And yet they have not been

demolished to this day. And these people dream

of being relocated, of at least having

repairs done in their buildings, but no one

is going to do that, no one wants to do it, and

everyone tells you there is no money. And

at the same time, apparently in this same country there are 2

trillion dollars for demolishing homes where people

do not want it. So yes, of course, many

people do want demolition. I think many at the

rally opposed

the renovation program because they want demolition of their own buildings,

but theirs are not being demolished, even though they want that.

Or maybe they are being demolished, but people do not want

a lack of clear rules. They say, "Well, explain

to us where you are relocating us. Why are you relocating us

there? Why are such decisions being made?"

Therefore, the first step in this renovation program

—here is the positive agenda, let's move to

the positive agenda. People keep telling me,

"You criticize,

but you don't offer anything positive." So I

am offering something positive to the Moscow city government.

First: full disclosure of how

the voting is conducted, and publish

all the data so that everyone can verify

their own vote, and so that all of us can verify

who voted how. Second: make

the movement of all

funds completely transparent—who we will be

buying apartments from and at what price—so people can see where

the first 100 billion

rubles (about $1.7 billion at the time), which have already been allocated, will go. And

third, and most importantly: if you have started

the renovation program and are going to demolish something,

then let's first demolish the homes of those who

for many years

have been asking for demolition. Let's simply publish a list: "Over the last 15 years, the Moscow mayor's office has received appeals from residents of the following buildings

to the Moscow mayor's office over the last 15 years

from residents of such-and-such buildings

demanding that they be declared unsafe

and that residents be relocated. We will do that first.

Just say that. Leave alone

the brick buildings in the city center, or

anywhere else, really. Demolish where

people dream of demolition." But they do not do that

because most often such buildings

are located in places that are not particularly attractive

for development.

So, Denis Kamensky asks me:

"For me and many of my friends, access

has been cut off; without using certain

programs, VPNs, it is impossible to access VKontakte and

Odnoklassniki and so on. I

take it this question is from Ukraine. Well, yes,

they are being blocked, so access has, in effect, been cut off.

Naturally, that is how it works: a block has been

put in place, and without a VPN you will not be able

to get around it. But the consequence of this will be that

you will simply have VPNs everywhere,

everyone will be using Chrome with that turbo mode,

with which all these blocks

will be bypassed. But won't that lead to...?

a positive effect for Russia, you know

like, they introduced blocks in Ukraine, and

therefore Russian officials

while criticizing the Ukrainian ones, will in Russia

block less. I definitely don't

think so. Many people wrote that this

would help Russia slow the pace

of blocking a little. I'm convinced of the opposite.

For a while, our crooks will criticize

some Ukrainian figures, but already

in a month we'll see completely different

rhetoric: they'll be blocking even more here.

And to all the outrage — "Why are you

blocking this website?" — they'll say, "Well,

Ukraine blocks things too, and Europe,

the enlightened Europe, stays silent. Just look at

the EU, NATO, UNESCO, and I don't know who else

staying silent about those blocks. But when it comes

to Russian blocks, you start making a fuss

like a herd. What, did Navalny stay silent when

Mail.ru was blocked in Ukraine? Then we'll

block your site too." And I'm sure that

this will become an escalation of mutual

blocking, and of course the authorities will use

this moment for PR in order to

push through these blocks. Listen, Andrei

Vladimirovich, what will happen to the federal

TV channels if you are elected? Will

the main propagandists be lustrated (removed from office after a regime change)?

A question like this comes up on every program.

I think I answered it last time.

And the fact that this question keeps coming up speaks to

how painful this issue is.

Uh, the main federal channels will remain

the main federal channels; it's just that

they won't all belong to the oligarch

Yury Kovalchuk, and one of them won't

belong to the state, as is the case now.

They should belong,

first of all, to different owners. And most

importantly, censorship must actually

be prosecuted by law. I believe that

the media, in principle,

should not belong, in particular,

to oligarchs. Alisher Usmanov should not

— whom we discussed at length today — he

should not own the newspaper *Kommersant*.

He has no business owning *Kommersant*.

Even setting everything else aside — well,

the man makes his money from mining and

ore-processing plants; he shouldn't be getting into

the media, because he buys media

in order to manipulate them. Using

the example of *Kommersant*, we've seen that

he turned it into a rather

at times very unpleasant media

outlet, where the journalists themselves

admit that yes, there is censorship. "Well, we kind of

try to be decent, but

there is censorship here." That should not exist.

And so, when it comes to the federal channels,

the state should do nothing. It

should leave the mass media

alone. This is the most important

social and public infrastructure

without which nothing develops.

So I will leave the media alone and

I will jail those officials who interfere

with them and

get in the way. A user with the nickname "It's Me"

writes: "Our building is a three-story dorm, full of

cracks. It's not being included in the program

for dilapidated housing. We've appealed

everywhere, with absolutely no result." Well,

that's exactly what I'm talking about. I simply think

that your three-story dorm is located in

a place that's not attractive for investment, and

if some city hall officials there

want to grab a prime plot of land,

they don't consider your plot

prime, so you'll be stuck in

your dorm. Or maybe there's some complicated

ownership structure and it's inconvenient for them

to resettle people. And yes, they've sort of forgotten about you, but meanwhile

they run after buildings with 4-meter

ceilings, where people are perfectly happy

with their homes.

Many Runet (Russian internet) users there are not

aware, asks Dima SS, suspecting that

in Russia an enormous number of

Russian-language Ukrainian websites are blocked. Well, not

an enormous number, but we know there are

dozens of Ukrainian websites

blocked on Russian territory. Well,

there are major news sites still

blocked — Kasparov.ru and Grani.ru — and

no one can get those blocks lifted. This is

absolutely illegal, just absolutely

an illegal blocking of Kasparov.ru or

Grani.ru, and it has existed for years.

I think they were blocked in 2014 or

2015, so

that is,

for several years now we haven't been able to

get this resolved. But you can't say it's truly

a huge number yet — though we're heading in that direction.

Now the Ukrainians have blocked

VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, and so on.

Of course, the retaliatory measure will be

the blocking of simply a huge — as it says

here, a huge number of

Ukrainian

We'll try to shut ourselves off entirely from everything

Ukrainian, from anything remotely Ukrainian,

with a huge

wall. So, what other questions do we have? When

you become president, what will your

solution to the conflict in Ukraine be? Wow,

that's quite a question to end on.

We have 4 minutes left in the program.

Let's go ahead and pick it — I'll answer.

Of course I'll answer that question. I've answered it many times

already; they ask it at almost every meeting.

[music]

Let's stick to the questions on today's agenda.

And I'll answer them. People ask me

where I'm going next. We have a tour of the Volga region, and I

fly out tomorrow afternoon, and we're opening six

for campaign offices, come forward.

Please—yes, you may have heard that we

are having problems opening campaign offices, and

Volkov often talks about this—these

problems do exist.

Indeed, over the last two weeks we’ve

seen a very clear trend—really,

FSB officers (Russia’s security service) have been showing up, not even hiding that they’re not

just some random people in plain clothes, but going to

our landlords and simply

intimidating them—sometimes outright threatening them to

an extreme degree. Well, I don’t want to get it wrong which

specific city it was—Volkov told me about it—

but they literally came to the landlord

and said—and she was a brave woman,

the kind who said, “I’ll rent you office space,

I support you and I definitely won’t back out”—to her

they came and said, basically, “We’ll open

a criminal case against you, expel your son from school,

throw you out, and you’ll be living in the gutter.” Well,

they dumped all that filth on her,

and she terminated the contract with us, and

it’s hard to blame her for that. In other words, they’re

trying to obstruct the creation of our network.

They can see that we’re running a real

campaign. They expected there would be nothing

except, at most, some online broadcasts, but

we have a real campaign with real

offices and a huge number of volunteers.

More than 100,000 people have signed up, and

so of course right now they’re simply

shaking—no one else has 100,000

volunteers. If 100,000 people

do something every day in order to

spread our information, in order to

spread the message that

people need to take a critical view of the regime,

go to rallies, and so on—well, of course

that’s going to be a problem for them. They’re frightened by the number 190—

190 cities that have already signed up to

take part in the June 12 rallies. All of this

scares them, and so

they’re trying to slow the pace of development of our

regional network. But they act

only by the methods they know how to use.

So they held a meeting,

and said, “Well then, what are we going to do? Well,

let’s hire some sellout entertainers; they

can fight with them on YouTube, and

let’s also send FSB officers to the campaign offices,

who will just scare everyone.” Well, that

does create certain problems for us. I

want to use this opportunity to call on everyone who

has premises in the cities we need—well,

come forward, anyone who isn’t afraid to help us with

this. But overall, of course, this will not

stop the development of our regional

network. Nor will it halt or

prevent it, because in the end

our network and our election campaign are

not about premises—they’re about people, and people are not going

anywhere. And as long as you keep watching

this channel, as long as you help

us spread information,

we will keep working.

By the way, that reminds me—

Oksana is giving me that terrifying look again

and

silently whispering: subscribe to our

channel. Every time we get more than a million

views—or around a million—but

the channel has 300,000 subscribers, which is excellent

for a channel that has only been operating for

two months. But please, don’t be lazy—

find the button below and click it.

Click the button—subscribe to our channel. And

all the more so because people tell the truth here, and

will keep telling it. You saw that we’ve

launched

several shows. I’m very pleased with how

Sergei Smirnov’s program from

Mediazona is going—he hosts an excellent, terrific show.

Vladimir Milov’s show on economics—I

really think it is

the best thing out there right now, the best thing you can

watch on economics. It’s explained in a very

very accessible way, and his guests are

wonderful. Today there was an interesting

discussion—go watch it. They’re writing to me in all caps,

in giant all-caps letters: subscribe

to Instagram, subscribe to Instagram.

Unfortunately there’s a problem there: if you type into

Instagram “Alexei Navalny,” my

real account doesn’t even come up.

Some other people come up instead, who unfortunately

are selling fake

T-shirts or scamming people. Navalny 4

is my real account, please

subscribe to our channel. As usual, we’ll

meet again in a week. I’ll

be here to try

to answer your questions—any questions—and

honestly, based on my understanding

of the situation, based on what I know, see, and

hear from you, to talk about what is happening in

the country. Thank you very much for watching

this program. See you next

week. Goodbye.

[music]