A Bribe for Peskov and Navka, Thieves from Roskomnadzor (Russia’s media and internet watchdog) Who Aren’t Thieves, and “The Fight at Liberalnaya Metro Station”

[music]

Hello, everyone. It’s Thursday in Moscow, and in Moscow

it’s 8:00 p.m. That means we’re live with

the program *Russia of the Future* and its host,

me, Alexei Navalny, a man

whose words are apparently equivalent to propaganda for Hitler’s camps,

as our own Nadezhda Matveeva called me.

She’s a teacher at School No. 9 in

Khabarovsk. We posted a

wonderful video about it. They simply say there:

“So, that Navalny of yours, is he already in jail

yet?” The schoolgirl tells her, “No, he’s not

in jail.” “Then he will be soon,”

the PE teacher from

Khabarovsk replies. I hope she’ll be wrong,

but it was an astonishing video in terms

of understanding what the modern school system is,

and in general what kind of strange teachers there are,

what is going on in

teachers’ heads, and what they can teach

their students. I’ll begin our program with

the happy news that we

have launched our

new version of our merch store. There are

lots of cool things there. You’ve probably

noticed that my, uh,

wonderful paper, uh, paper

cup, on which I usually write

curses and various things aimed at

officials, has been replaced by a mug from our

merch store. And there are all sorts of

wonderful things there, a new

collection. I was told in big letters

that we lowered the prices. We

really did lower them. And most

importantly, please remember that when

you buy a sticker, a T-shirt,

some little item, a wallet, a badge, all

that money goes toward fighting crooks and

thieves, whom we’re about to start talking

about right now, because, uh, Dmitry

Peskov, my favorite, the favorite of the Anti-Corruption

Foundation. I think that

if you asked our

staff, “Who’s your favorite

corrupt official?” probably someone would say

Shuvalov, perhaps, and someone else would mention

Sechin. Well, of course, everyone would mention

Putin. But we simply don’t count him.

He’s sort of the boss of all bosses, right.

We don’t even include him in the ranking

of corrupt officials. He’s just somewhere above it,

looming over it. But among the more ordinary ones,

among those rank-and-file corrupt officials,

Peskov, of course—Dmitry Peskov together

with his wife—makes up one of the most

striking

corruption cartels, so to speak, I don’t even

know how else to put it. I mean,

they’re an example of a completely brazen family

that has sunk its teeth into all of our

throats, drinks our blood, and takes

our money, and on top of that regularly says

some, well, fairly outrageous

things. For example—and this is why I’m even

talking about him—he held a meeting with

students at MGIMO (Moscow State Institute of International Relations). Well, Peskov is known here as a

great master of foreign policy, and he

worked somewhere, at the embassy in Turkey.

Presumably, he met with MGIMO

students and shared his wisdom. And this was

a more or less public

meeting. And he,

as President Putin’s press secretary,

speaks on behalf of President Putin. He is

a man whose job is to weigh

his words. He told us about poverty. And

he explained what the root of all

our problems really is. He was asked about

the low standard of living. He said: “The low

standard of living of Russians is the natural

result of two world wars and the collapse of the USSR.”

“The country can get rid of poverty

only in the long historical perspective.”

And so we’re all just waiting. At that point someone should have

asked Dmitry Peskov a follow-up

question. Dear Dmitry Peskov, when exactly

will this historical perspective arrive? Because

those world wars, as far as I can tell,

ended about 75 years ago. Putin

has been in power for 20 years, five times

longer than the last world

war lasted. And the collapse of the USSR was also quite

a long time ago. And Putin has been in power longer

than Yeltsin and Gorbachev combined. But

nevertheless, you see, to this day

Hitler is still to blame for everything. And from Dmitry

Peskov’s point of view, apparently we really

are supposed to wait—you and I are supposed to wait

for some historical perspective before we

can escape poverty. This

week I saw, I think, a study by

RBC, maybe. I won’t lie, I can’t say for sure,

but there was a study about

salaries showing that

about 20% of people earn 15,000

rubles a month. That’s poverty,

plain and simple—official poverty. And all these

poor people ask Dmitry Peskov: “Why are we poor in a

rich oil-producing country?” And he

tells them:

“Well, world wars, you see? Uh,

you understand, world wars. Gorbachev, uh,”

says Dmitry Peskov,

and then remembers he has to leave for lunch

with some oligarch. He looks at his

$800,000 watch and says: “All of this is because of

the worl— the worl—

world wars.” And it really

does raise a perfectly natural

question. Dear Peskov, did Hitler personally

sneak up on you, devise some

cunning plan, and strap that

37 million-ruble watch onto your wrist? Who was it? Hitler,

Bormann, Müller—who else do we know? Uh,

members of the SS, members of the SD—who

what consequences of the world wars and

the collapse of the USSR strapped that onto Peskov’s wrist?

a watch worth 37 million rubles. And how exactly

are the world wars connected to the fact that

Peskov’s family, Navka, and Dmitry Peskov himself

rented a yacht for 26 million rubles a week?

And by the way, we talked about this, and

we continue to maintain that we even

know who paid the bribe. It was those very

Magomedov brothers from the Summa Group,

who are now, as you can see, sitting there—

officially Surkov is sitting there. Officially sitting there are

simply Surkov, Magomedov, and Peskov.

This Magomedov gave them all money. He

paid for their yachts with it. He is now, uh,

being held in Lefortovo (a Moscow detention prison), I think, accused

of creating an organized criminal

group. He’s facing 20 years, and good. And

our entire FSB (Federal Security Service), the Investigative Committee, and

everyone else—they know that these

people accused of creating a criminal

organization were paying bribes to Peskov,

giving him money and paying for his

yachts. Was that Hitler too?

Are these also consequences of the world war?

Consequences of something like that. So

75 years ago, World War II ended,

but apparently something still

happened back then. Somehow we didn’t quite

win completely, or I don’t know, something

happened, so that now, as they used to say,

you know, the “echo of war,”

the echo of war has manifested itself in the fact that Peskov

was forced to take 26

million rubles from you and me to ride around on that yacht

or buy himself a house on Rublyovka (an elite Moscow suburb) for 1

billion rubles.

Yes, of course, it’s the world war—not

thieving officials like Peskov

who are to blame for the fact that we live in poverty

almost completely.

The problem isn’t that Dmitry Peskov also has

an apartment in Paris worth nearly 2 million

euros, you understand? War. There you go. Well, that

war happened in Germany too. Germany

was defeated and divided.

Uh-huh, and quite rightly it

paid reparations. The

Germans rebuilt various

facilities here for us. It was a defeated country. In that

war, that terrible war, it

lost. And yet, in Germany

the average salary is 5,000 euros. And we

won.

We have lived in peace all this time.

For the last 50–60 years, we have also received

a great many petrodollars. In the last

20 Putin years, we received an enormous

amount of petrodollars. And what did we

end up with? We ended up with nothing but

poverty. And now Peskov has the nerve

to say this. And unfortunately, the students of

MGIMO (Moscow State Institute of International Relations) lack the courage to ask him

follow-up questions: “What exactly, what kind of

poverty is connected to the world war? And

most importantly, what kind of, well, historical

perspective, right? ‘We can only get rid of poverty

in the country only in a historical

perspective.’” That probably

decodes as follows: We can get rid of

poverty only when Putin

is gone, in the historical perspective,

when Peskov is gone, when Dmitry

Peskov and his wife Navka are no longer

winning suspicious

tenders. A truly remarkable

story happened with Crimea,

uh, where,

well, you know, colossal sums are being poured into it,

absolutely enormous amounts of money,

fantastic sums are being allocated to

Crimea. And all of this is explained by saying that in

Crimea, the infrastructure needs to be restored

because Ukraine, all these

years, was, uh, deliberately destroying

Crimea’s infrastructure. And therefore,

of course, who cares now about Smolensk

Region, or Yekaterinburg, or

Voronezh—we must give all the money to

Crimea. And we do, notably, give it hundreds of

billions of rubles. But somehow in

Crimea, life

isn’t exactly improving proportionally,

isn’t getting better in proportion to these

investments—it’s not improving much. And we

understand why, because here’s

a very telling story: very large sums are now being

invested in

infrastructure. Well, that’s where it’s easiest

to steal, naturally. In infrastructure, in

particular roads, road repairs,

road maintenance. And it turned out that the wife

of Dmitry Peskov, Tatyana Navka, she

turned out to own 17% of

a producer of industrial salt.

What does Tatyana Navka have to do with industrial salt

in Crimea? It’s a rather strange thing.

Why would Tatyana Navka from Moscow suddenly

do that, when she herself says that her business

is connected with organizing all

those figure-skating shows of hers? But

then suddenly she was skating along, doing a triple

toe loop, and then on some fourth rotation,

as she was going into a quadruple toe loop, it came into

her head: “Maybe I should

successfully invest in a company

that produces industrial salt in Crimea.”

And here’s the neat part. As soon as

she invested there, that

enterprise immediately

uh, became a kind of local

monopolist and supplies industrial

salt to Krymavtodor, as the

sole supplier. That is, they

were the only ones to win the tender. The interesting

thing is that initially, in this

competition, the maximum contract

price was 22 million rubles, but it was signed

for even more—25 million rubles,

apparently. And someone will say to me: “Well, by

the scale of Peskov’s watch." And they

blow the same amount [snorts]

in a week on a yacht. That’s not all that much, but

guys, this is just the beginning.

Can you imagine how much industrial

salt is needed per year? And today it’s Crimea, so

tomorrow it’ll be something else. This is absolutely,

it’s just a wonderful business in the sense

that, well, if Dmitry Peskov

pushes a few buttons and your

company becomes a supplier for

government needs, then in front of you

there opens up simply

absolutely amazing prospects for

smoothly siphoning off money—you do

nothing. Well, some people there

cut you in, and you get 16% of

these monopoly supplies,

infrastructure supplies. These are huge,

colossal sums of money. It’s simply

a state monopoly, and these are

government contracts. And somehow

figure skater Navka is involved. What do you

call that? I call it very simply. They

can both sue me.

I invite them to do it. But I believe

that this is laundering. First of all, it’s

bribes. Second, it’s the laundering of already

accepted bribes so they can say:

"Well, Peskov’s wife is a well-known

businesswoman, like all these

crooks." That same Surkov, whom

we showed in the photograph, was sitting on

the other side of Magomedov. His wife is an

entrepreneur too and receives some

hundreds of millions of rubles. What kind of

entrepreneur? Does anyone even understand

what business Surkov’s wife is in?

What business is Peskov’s wife in?

Well, roughly that kind. She gets a cut,

takes part in state contracts. And we buy salt

at a higher price, as we saw directly from

the example of this contract—higher even

than the maximum price. And with that money they

have a great time, while telling all of us

that, well, guys, why are you

running around over some salt,

talking nonsense,

showing photos of various yachts,

stirring up the public like that,

inciting social hatred, without understanding,

you fools, that it’s all the consequences of war,

you see, the heavy legacy

of two world wars and the collapse of the USSR. It’s very

convenient to blame old man

Gorbachev, who was around a hundred years

ago. Not to mention that old man

Gorbachev came out of the Communist

Party of the Soviet Union, where

Putin and Peskov were; well, probably not Navka,

she was still too young, but this whole

gang came out of there. They’re the ones who

brought down the Soviet Union, and now they

lecture us, tell us fairy tales, and walk around with

watches worth 20.3 million rubles.

That’s why we launched this

new project, 2019. So that their

lives would be worse

a little bit, and

to make life a little harder for them. Because

one way or another, everything that happens in

Crimea, including the procurement of salt, is

all connected to the United Russia party. Yes,

of course, Putin too, yes, and the prosecutor’s offices,

various courts and everything else, but they have

a political instrument of control.

Their deputies are everywhere and they

control everything, signing all the paperwork,

because they win elections as

United Russia. So once again I want you to

reread Dmitry Peskov’s statement

about the war, get angry, and go right now

to 2019.

Register, and we, uh, will keep putting pressure on them

from there. We will, well, maybe,

even in Crimea itself, well, there may appear

some candidate or someone else,

a Communist, a member of A Just Russia, the LDPR,

or an independent, who says: "Well,

come on, I’m not afraid of anyone, and I

don’t want Dmitry Peskov to win

the tender here, or his wife to win the contract for

supplying salt. Well then, all the votes

that normal people have, we’ll gather

and give to this guy. Maybe he’ll

win, maybe he’ll lose, unfortunately.

But at least we’ll

increase his chances of winning.

Maybe he won’t be, and almost certainly he won’t be, 100%

our kind of

full supporter, and maybe

he’ll even be, as they say,

a hardcore jingoist. But even if he is

that hardcore, he still won’t like

this whole salt and Peskov mess.

Somehow he’ll feel awkward in front of his neighbors

Or he’ll simply be

outraged himself, because he sees

poor people. That’s a real

possibility. And so even if

we give some of our votes to this unpleasant guy who, well,

who comes out against Peskov,

let’s throw him a few of our votes.

Register at 2019. Now, airports

named after Putin. I actually insist

that

all these airport renamings

are really all airports named after

Putin. Because [snorts]

there’s one reason here. Well, they

really are just distracting our

attention. I’m not saying anything new. I got

a lot of questions about this:

"Why are they doing this? And why are they

naming things after Pushkin? And why in

Omsk did they name it not after Letov, but after

someone else? Ah, well, it’s done precisely for

that reason: so that we discuss this

this nonsense. So that people would actually

get outraged and baffled. That’s the point.

Objectively speaking, of course, it really does make you want

to get angry, because it’s such an idiotic

name: Sheremetyevo Airport named after

Alexander Pushkin, with “Moscow” in parentheses.

That is now, [laughter], the airport’s official name.

Sheremetyevo Airport. And then there’s

Domodedovo Airport named after Mikhail Lomonosov, with

“Moscow” in parentheses. And the idea behind it is very simple,

and it was basically thought up by

Peskov and the whole gang around him, simply

so that we would be discussing idiocy,

getting outraged, while all of this will cost

a substantial amount of money. They renamed—or rather,

not renamed, but as Minister Medinsky said,

“added names to”

47 airports across the country.

They say 5 million people took part,

and that in Arkhangelsk, Nizhnevartovsk, and

St. Petersburg there will be a second round of

voting. Just look at how fiercely people are

arguing, debating whose name should

be given to the airports. So what would be sillier:

Sheremetyevo Airport named after Alexander Pushkin,

or simply an airport directly named

after Alexander Pushkin? Because, really,

what on earth do you need “Sheremetyevo” for then?

Why not just call it

Pushkin Airport? I mean,

it’s one absurdity piled on top of another, but that’s

exactly what it’s for: so that we

keep discussing this instead of talking about

actual, um,

real things, objective things. Like the decline

in people’s incomes, for example.

Sure, now you’ll say to me: “Well, you,

Navalny, you fool, you’re discussing it yourself,

so that means their plan is working.” Well, I am

talking about it, but I’m talking about it in the sense

that this is exactly what we shouldn’t be discussing. I

just also want to point out that

a lot of money will have to be spent. Just

imagine: everything has to be reprinted, all the

names redone, all the signs—an airport is the kind of place

where you can’t just

replace a sheet on a menu in some airport café

and write that

this is now Sheremetyevo named after Alexander

Pushkin. There are huge numbers of

international documents, huge numbers of

official documents. I mean,

the renamings themselves

will, over the course of

several years, cost tens of billions of rubles.

It will be a kind of decentralized

corruption. In other words, that money

will be siphoned off, and various

small-time people at the lower levels will make money off it,

for the most part. But in the end, it’s we who

will pay. So the renaming of

airports is a doubly vile idea,

because it was done in order to

mess with our heads and distract us from

real problems. And on top of that, we’ll pay

those very billions of rubles for it. And somehow

it just makes you want to...

On the one hand, I was thinking today that I’d

go on the program and say: in the Beautiful

Russia of the Future, we’ll scrap all this

damn

idiotic naming.

But probably, in the Beautiful Russia

of the Future, someone will later play me a clip from this

program and say: “All right, that was a

stupid decision, but now you want

to reverse it all and spend

tens of billions of rubles again

just to undo this stupidity?” Well,

probably not. Probably this stupid,

harmful decision will stay with

us for years. In a couple of years

we’ll probably get used to the fact that it’s

Sheremetyevo Airport named after Alexander Pushkin, with

“Moscow” in parentheses. But it still shows

the sheer scale of

the nastiness of our authorities. Even the Soviet

Union didn’t do this. In the Soviet Union

everyone loved, you know, renaming things

and giving everything the names of leaders—or

just names in general. It was part of that

Soviet cult, that fixation,

that thing everyone was obsessed with:

renaming and naming things.

But even so, they didn’t do this with airports,

because they considered it stupid. There is

a locality, a historical name, and that’s what

they used: Domodedovo,

Sheremetyevo, Vnukovo. But these

guys went further. They don’t

care about the inconvenience this will cause

everyone. They just thought that right now

they needed to solve the problem of making

a couple million people talk less

about pension reform and more

about airport nonsense, and so they did it. And of course,

the best story in all this is the one about

the airport named after Kant. It’s even tied to, well,

that admiral business too. I wanted to say

a couple of words about that. You’ve

probably seen the whole thing: in

Kaliningrad there was a vote, and in

that public vote

Kant, the great philosopher, was winning. And it’s

very interesting—really, very important—

to understand that if

you ask

the average person on Earth which

is the most famous person

who was born, lived, and buried

in the territory of

modern-day Russia,

then, strangely enough, Kant would be in first

place, or at least among the first. You’ve probably seen

that funny map online that’s been going around.

It’s literally a map showing: who is

the most famous person who lived in

this territory? And in fact, Kant

He lived in the Kaliningrad region. He

was even a Russian subject in the time of

Elizabeth Petrovna (Empress Elizabeth of Russia), whose name

the airport is now set to bear. And yet,

still, the average

average inhabitant of planet Earth, well, doesn’t

know or remember any Pushkin and won’t

remember Peter I either, or, well, whoever else

there may be. He doesn’t know, has never heard

anything at all about Mikhail Lomonosov.

But, uh, Kant really is a kind of

world heritage figure, and he is the best-known

person, again, for the average

foreigner.

And so against that backdrop

it looked, of course, completely wild that

first a State Duma deputy said—this

was a State Duma deputy from Tatarstan—he said

that under absolutely no circumstances should this

be done. Uh, war veterans,

well, again, again, you see, veterans

of the war, the war, heritage—we must

remember that. War veterans,

however many of them are still alive, they

think this is wrong—it’s unpatriotic,

it’s a scandal. And Kant, apparently,

cannot be considered a great man for

Kaliningrad. After that, the monument

was splashed with paint, you know. And the most striking

speech, of course, came from Vice Admiral

Igor Mukhamedshin of the Baltic Fleet.

We have the video now, let’s

listen to him. You’ve probably seen it, but here are 58

wonderful seconds. The vice admiral

of the Baltic Fleet says,

speaking about Kant:

I appeal to everyone standing here

with an earnest request. We have

four candidates competing, that is, for

the airport to bear their name. There is

Elizabeth Petrovna, that is, the Russian

empress,

some fairly well-known Immanuel

Kant, and two military commanders.

Right. Well, speaking of—everyone says “Kant,”

“Oswald” or something else—this man,

who betrayed his homeland, who

humiliated himself,

yes, crawled on his knees so that he would be given

a chair, you understand, at the university,

so that he could teach there, write some kind of

uh, incomprehensible books that none of

those standing here has ever read and ever will

read. And yet, you understand, for an airport

of a region and city where Soviet soldiers and officers fought

to the death, you understand,

to bear the name of a foreigner.

I hope for your understanding. Many

thanks.

Everyone says, “Kant, Kant.” But some kind of

some incomprehensible books that

absolutely none of the people standing here has

read. Listen, that’s simply true. Well,

let’s be honest with ourselves. Well,

few people have read Kant’s books, but, damn,

up to now, generally speaking, we proceeded

from the idea that this was not, well, something to

be proud of. I mean, when someone

asks you, “Have you read Kant’s books?”

you say, “Well, I read something in

college.”

Or you dodge the question somehow. Or you

say, “Well, I’m planning to read them,” or

“I haven’t read the books, but I’ve heard of them, I generally

have an idea what the *Critique*

of Pure Reason is, uh, or some of his other

well-known works.” I mean,

you can’t exactly be proud that some

some world philosopher wrote

incomprehensible books that nobody has read and nobody

will read. Why the hell Kant? And none

of the people standing here has read him or ever will

read him. And on Facebook I saw

an absolutely amazing—really amazing—

and very apt post on this subject.

Someone found

an article from the magazine *Kommunist*. That is, in

Soviet times, well, the level of all this

hysteria about veterans

being displeased was several orders of magnitude

higher. Besides, back then there were living

veterans, and they really could be

pleased or displeased by something. But

back then, in those days, the magazine *Kommunist* in

an editorial wrote: “Immanuel Kant

belongs among those thinkers

whose names mark the beginning of intellectual

movements of historical significance.

From him originates

German classical philosophy. One of the

sources of Marxism.”

That is, the Soviet Union, Soviet

education, the Soviet system as such—

of course it regarded all of them as

bourgeois philosophers, but still they were

seen as precursors of Marxism; it was still

a form of knowledge, something good, something

we were familiar with. We, Soviet people,

reading *Kommunist*, read Kant and

considered that yes, he was indeed one

of the sources of Marxism.

But now, you see, we have this kind of

swaggering stupidity, swaggering

ignorance. This man there in his uniform

with his insignia—as a naval officer, he’s

supposed to be a normal, decent

person. But he simply behaves, well,

like a fool, you know, like

what in Russian is called a *gopnik* (a crude street thug). This is the kind of

thing the Moscow liberal intelligentsia

would call a suburban *gopnik*. I myself am from

the Moscow suburbs. I don’t like all these

sorts of labels, but nevertheless this

is exactly what it looks like.

It’s a completely vile kind of bragging

about one’s own ignorance. We don’t know

who this Kant is. And he just happens to be one

of the most famous philosophers in the world. Yes

...his grave. He is buried there,

the veterans are unhappy, and, well, that's fine.

The man doesn't resign, he isn't

fired, he doesn't get a call from the

administration, where the president says:

"What are you, an idiot or something?" Somehow, in

our country, they always seem to say that

education is a priority. We take pride

in the fact that we are developing education, and yet you

are behaving like an idiot. Really, this

Vice Admiral

of the Baltic Fleet is behaving like an idiot and

is proud of being an idiot. He is proud

that he hasn't read a single book.

Well then, I don't know, let him come out and

say it. Like, you know, here with a fork,

but no, here we eat navy-style pasta with our hands

and everyone standing in the square,

just scoops it up somehow,

and shoves it in. We need a head

for eating. That's exactly what it sounds like. And that's

why I'm talking about this for so long,

because it really irritates me,

that following this militant obscurantism,

when priests started regulating everything here,

they don't like this, they don't like that,

so here it's "sex propaganda," and there it's

"drug propaganda," and then there are some bands

they don't like either. Right now they don't like this

band iпиak, and somewhere in Izhevsk, I think,

they're performing. I saw it before

going on air, I saw that the club where

they're performing, some billiards hall on the

outskirts of town. The police show up,

Rospotrebnadzor (Russia's consumer protection watchdog) shows up, and they shut down

this club because they let the band perform.

So they don't like them. And, damn it, they also

don't like Kant. Do you understand? First they

were saying that young people

are into all sorts of awful things,

and that we, as guardians of spiritual morality,

will make them stop. Let them put down their

mobile phones they've buried themselves in,

and read a book, or read the Bible,

or, well, I don't know, just take a walk

outside. But now we've gone even further.

And Kant, and those bespectacled types,

those seven people or so who have read Kant, well,

they should be ashamed that they

read Kant, because of course he isn't

a patriot. Well, imagine that. Immanuel Kant,

yes, I mean, even a person with a name like

that. How could he possibly be a patriot? And

this, of course, will have very

negative consequences—this loutishness, this

demonstrative, encouraged thug mentality

will have major negative

consequences. I mean, in terms of,

the destruction of education, in terms of

the fact that the very priorities

in society will change. You see,

this elevates all sorts of Krasnodar

old women, the "Putin squads" (pro-Kremlin activist groups), and

some fake Cossacks. That is,

half-drunk men in trousers with red

stripes and some kind of caps, who

never studied anything, never went anywhere, and they

aren't ashamed of it—they're proud of it.

This is an extremely negative phenomenon, and it

is growing. Again, today I saw

statistics, uh,

that despite the proclaimed thaw

in October alone, 16 criminal cases were

opened under Article 282 for incitement of hatred. Well,

all of this is heading exactly in that direction. And

some supposedly harmful, incomprehensible phenomena.

Whether it's Kant or the band ISпиak, we

don't engage with any of it at all. I'm not

trying to compare them directly. It's more like,

we don't watch this stuff, we don't

understand it at all. It has nothing to do with

the potatoes we eat every day, or

the Malakhov show (a popular Russian TV talk show) that we watch

every day. Therefore all of this should be

banned. That is exactly what

Vice Admiral

Mukhamedshin told us. And for that I strongly

condemn him. And in general, frankly, someone should

check his assets. Ah [snorts]

let me answer some questions. Alexei

Shigurov writes: "The renaming of

airports is also a way of shifting

attention away from the renaming of streets

and squares after Nemtsov abroad." Well,

that's quite possible. In fact, it's

a multifaceted task. They're distracting attention from a lot of things.

Because, well,

all of Omsk is debating it: Letov or not Letov,

right, all of Kaliningrad is endlessly discussing

this Kant issue. In Moscow everyone discussed the fact that,

good Lord, why on earth would they rename

Sheremetyevo after Pushkin? Pushkin is a

wonderful poet and writer. Pushkin is

our everything, the creator of modern

Russian literary language. But why an airport

at Sheremetyevo in 2018? Maybe

it would be better to spend that money, I don't know,

on scholarships for people

who study Pushkin, uh, or for winners

of Russian language or literature Olympiads (academic competitions),

in literature. In other words, any absurdity gets discussed,

and that discussion distracts

attention from all sorts of things, including

Nemtsov Square. And then

Unicorngld. Unicorngld, as usual,

every day there is a question for the program from

Unicorn Gerald. Can we say

that the Constitutional Court's recognition

of the border change between Chechnya and

Ingushetia—isn't this feudalism? Well,

of course it's feudalism. It's even, uh,

well, a certain phenomenon that,

it seems to me, goes even beyond

feudalism. We have an absolute monarch

and then there are these two, uh,

genuine feudal lords: Kadyrov

and Yevkurov. They agreed on something between themselves,

some kind of oil-related matter

They settled it among themselves there, and then, basically, all of us

the entire

legal system, the entire judicial system

not just Ingushetia, but all Ingush people

had to be demonstratively told to get lost, humiliated, and

insulted. Absolutely everyone. The necessary

Constitutional Court, where, well,

rather cowardly, as we know, greedy

people sit, people who for the sake of some apartment,

uh, and a large pension and salary, sold off

everything in the world—they sold their honor, their conscience,

uh, the very concept of law. They too need to be

forced to do this. The entire, the entire judicial

system needs to be subordinated to the goal that

Ramzan Kadyrov cooked something up there, uh,

with some land in Chechnya. This is, of course,

utterly disgusting, but it is a major

insult inflicted on the Ingush. Well, I

think that, by and large, the Chechens

gain nothing from this either. They will not

get a single kopeck (a tiny amount of money) from it. I have already said here

many times: if there are any

objective reasons and some benefit in

exchanging this land—if there is oil there, I don't

know what else is there—well, then say so.

Say: we did this for the oil

and everyone will get a share—the Ingush there,

the Chechens, the federal budget.

There's, like, a scheme here, and we'll make

money on it, pay taxes on it, and everyone will be

happy—say that. But they don't say that

because, fundamentally, they

consider everyone, well, basically some kind of

cattle. What are we even supposed to tell them? We

cooked up this little deal here, we'll make money

on it. I mean, it's all just some kind of, well, like

we dis—I'm discussing Ramzan Kadyrov, I'm

discussing Yevkurov, we informed

Putin and sent a cut to Sechin and some

FSB guys and someone else. And that's it.

So, basically, they divided it up, like brothers,

carved it up, and everything is fine. What? What other

people? Of course, these are absolutely

disgusting things. Viktor

asks: "Alexei Anatolyevich, an important question:

why are there no class-action lawsuits over things like

concert bans? Here, this is

impossible. We are not allowed to file a lawsuit—I can't

say this word, sorry, on

air—all together, claiming that they are violating our

rights. Viktor, it's impossible to do that. In

Russia, unfortunately, you cannot bring

class-action lawsuits, even if you

go to court over the idiotic actions

of some people who, by the way,

are also hiding. It's not even clear who

is banning the concerts. There is no name

of the person who banned the concert. And they will

tell you: "Your interests are not affected." We

deal with this regularly. When we go in with

some lawsuit in defense of group

interests, Russian courts say: "Well,

so, Alexei Navalny, explain how

your interests are affected by the fact that the group

IPS or, I don't know, Husky, the rapper

Husky, was banned from performing. Prove it." Well,

I say: "Well, I believe that this, well,

somehow violates my interests, because

because it is illegal, and since

it is illegal, that in itself violates my

interests, doesn't it?" They say: "Well

no, if you, if you bring

a receipt showing that you had a ticket to Husky's concert

that was canceled, and because of that you suffered

some material damage or fell ill

or something else, then maybe—but otherwise

your interests are not affected." And Simon

Damantovsky

asks: "Was Davydych released? What do you

think about that?" Well, as far as I

understand, either he has already been released,

or at this very moment the well-known

street racer Erik Davydych has been released.

At last. I spoke about him once, I spoke about him

on this program

a long time ago,

without feeling any particularly, uh,

warm feelings toward him, but I certainly believe

that, of course, he was in prison, he was sitting there, and

criminal cases were opened against him,

cases were opened against his wife too. Uh,

and of course, for political reasons—he, well,

what you'd call, went after

the leadership of the traffic police of the Interior Ministry in the Moscow Region,

and Moscow. And they demonstratively, and basically,

threw him in prison lawlessly. He kind of

at the trial,

uh, well, behaved in a peculiar way. He would go out there

and say: "You are persecuting me

for political reasons." Well, what else? I'm not

Navalny." He literally said: "I, I

am not the opposition, I'm, like, for Putin. So

why are you jailing me?" Uh, again,

I'm not gloating in any way. I said it then,

and I say it now: it was an absolutely unjust

verdict. Maybe he did something

or other, but given how the trial was conducted, we

can see that due process was violated there, that

criminal law was violated there, well,

I mean, it was a farce, not a

trial. And obviously, it was simply an order

uh, from the Interior Ministry leadership, a hit job. After all, he

had been distributing some videos and

saying things about how they were all

homosexuals

and there was something else like that. In other words, he

had acted against them in a way that, in their view,

was against the rules of their code. And they

said to him: "Oh, so that's how it is—then we'll

lock you up right now." And they did. Exactly

that—locked him up. They did not convict him, did not hand down

a fair sentence; they simply said:

"That fat guy over there

is showing off against us on his

channel or whatever, racing around with some

other guys like him." They think they're really tough.

"Lock them up"—and they did, so it's good

that he finally got out. And, of course,

In that sense, I really do think that,

well, it’s a strong term, of course,

— “political prisoner” — but still,

it’s not unfounded,

so in that sense, he is, basically,

effectively, a political prisoner.

Infer overkill. What about a New Year’s broadcast?

Come on, I don’t believe you really want

to listen to me on New Year’s as well, but if

I’m being honest, I kind of feel that New Year’s

is still a family holiday. I wanted to, I

really want to join all of you

for New Year’s, but still, I kind of

would like to spend time with my family,

from whom I’m currently separated.

Seventy-seven-year-old Lev Ponomaryov. So,

Judge Gordeyev, who handed down those 25

days, is the same one who gave me 30, right? And

so if I were asked, “When Judge Gordeyev is

trying someone, what do

you think?” I would of course say,

“He doesn’t judge at all, because he’s not a judge,

he’s just this kind of

Tverskoy Court functionary. He’s just some guy who,

uh, sits there listening, listening,

nods his head, and then simply reads off

a piece of paper whatever he’s been

dictated by the police, the FSB (Russia’s security service), or

someone from the presidential administration, I

don’t know who. And in that sense, he’s

just a complete puppet.

I think he even tried me twice.

I think one time he gave me 12 days

in detention, another time 30. So, I mean,

there’s absolutely nothing there resembling

justice. But if I were told,

with one amendment, that he would be judging

a seventy-seven-year-old

guy, a human rights activist, who, by the way,

is constantly hanging around with the

presidential administration, sits on

various councils. So in that sense he’s

very much a human rights activist,

a radical one, but also a

constructive one. He’s not exactly

friends with them, but on principle

he speaks out on principle

and takes principled positions, while at the same time [snorts]

participating in various councils — in that

sense, a completely systemic person. He

published a post, a completely

proper one, absolutely noble. He

called on everyone to take part in that

Mothers’ March. Remember, there was that

Mothers’ March, organized by various

people in support of the young people who were jailed

in the New Greatness case, where FSB officers

basically created a supposed extremist

organization and jailed completely

random people. And there, even the charter of that

organization and all its documents were written by

an official FSB provocateur. “Official”

in the sense that it was established in court, in the

case materials, that a certain person had been

planted there, and he drafted the charter

of the organization. And then that organization was called

terrorist, so let’s lock everyone

up. So the march was against that. And

Lev Ponomaryov wrote a post, and now he’s been given

25 days. But I’ve been

under arrest many times, and I’ve never once seen

a 77-year-old in there. I mean,

it’s pretty unpleasant in general, yes, but for a

seventy-something-year-old

person it is objectively torture. There’s

almost no medical care there.

There’s a paramedic on weekdays, but at night there

isn’t one. And if something happens, they call an ambulance for you.

I got sick there once, I had

a fever, and when the ambulance arrived,

that was it.

To them, you know, a sick detainee is basically

someone who’s trying

to get out of it. They all see it that way. And they came to me

and said, “Yep, fever.” I

said, “A fever.” They said, “We’re not

taking you anywhere.” I said, “I don’t

need to be taken anywhere. Just give me a shot

to bring the fever down.” And they said, “Well,

no, you’ll live.” Then they packed up and left.

And when you’re 40, that’s one

situation. When you’re 77,

and you’re in a cell where there’s

a draft and it’s full of smoke, well, Ponomaryov’s life

is under threat. And most importantly,

there is absolutely no reason to keep him

under arrest. What did he do?

By law, arrest and deprivation of liberty are some kind of

exceptional measure, to which people are subjected

in exceptional cases

or as a kind of special

punishment. The people in there are

people who drove drunk or high,

under the influence of drugs while driving,

or drove without a license, or they’re some kind of

real hooligans. But him — a seventy-seven-year-old,

forgive me, an old man — well, he looks

pretty spry. He’s fine, really, but

he’s still 77. They jailed him for a Facebook post

for 25 days. That is, of course,

an absolutely disgusting outrage. And people often ask:

“Why?” Why? In order to

demonstrate that they can jail anyone.

Be afraid. The whole idea is intimidation.

[snorts]

Whether you’re a man or a woman, whether you’re 20 or

77,

be afraid, don’t go to rallies, don’t

take part in any protests. And that’s what

Putin, Peskov with his watch, Navka with her

“technical salt,” that meaningless

dim-witted general babbling on

about Kant — that’s what they fear

most of all. And so they just

snatch people up. There aren’t actually any mass

repressions. In fact, going to

rallies is safe. Maybe, well, 10

people will get locked up, okay, they’ll lock me up, I

I'll serve another 30 days. Lev Ponomaryov

was jailed; he'll serve 30 days, or 25,

if they don't shave a little off it in the kangaroo court tomorrow,

I hope they cut at least something.

But, but somehow

next time, a lot of people will think,

they'll think: "Good Lord, if they even jailed such an

old man, an elderly grandfather." That means

it's supposedly dangerous to go to rallies. That's exactly

the very simple idea

behind intimidation. And, well, this kind of

ritual act took place. But they

knew perfectly well that if they went all the way

and gave him the full 25 days, then, well,

there would be a scandal, naturally, there would be

a scandal.

Interestingly, by the way, the main

complaint from the authorities—well, all those

Telegram channels,

TV outlets that made

so-called exposés about Ponomaryov—what they present as

his main crime is

his conversation with the Japanese

ambassador. Go to Wikipedia, read

the article about him, and there is literally a

special section, something like "conversation with the

Japanese ambassador." And there Ponomaryov is

talking to some Japanese ambassador.

Well, honestly, in my view,

that's nonsense. He says: "Well, there, we—you

should somehow fund public

opinion so that public opinion in Russia

would not oppose handing over two islands

to Japan." Exactly the same thing that Putin is

doing and saying now. They say this themselves.

I mean, not Ponomaryov—who

is Ponomaryov? A private individual; that's his

private opinion. But here the state was telling us

the very same thing quite recently.

Yet Ponomaryov was brutally hounded for it.

Really viciously. And now they are doing

the same thing themselves. This poor old man

was jailed for 70—oh, for sev—God,

thank God not for 70, but for 25 days.

He is 77 years old. I demand the release of Lev

Ponomaryov. He is a complicated person. He has often

written strange things, like

"Navalny is a nationalist, and I won't shake his

hand."

Nevertheless, to me he is a person who

must be immediately,

unconditionally released. There is not a single

reason why he should be sitting in a

special detention center. It threatens his life

and health. It amounts to torture. And I do not

understand why Lev Ponomaryov is a terrible

criminal, while

Mr. Belyaninov

is not a criminal. Just now, he was appointed

head of the Eurasian Development Bank

This is a bank that, on behalf of all of us,

was established by the Russian

Federation together with the Republic of

Kazakhstan. It's a kind of state

bank that advances certain, uh,

state interests. Its authorized

capital is $7 billion.

The Russian Federation has 65% or 66% there, so,

basically it's a Russian bank. And at the head of

this Russian bank, in charge of those $7

billion, they put the very same

guy—the former head of the

customs service—from whom, during a search,

they were hauling out money in shoeboxes

during the raid.

Do you understand? The head of the customs

service—they searched his place. But

if in Russia they came with a search warrant, well,

then by even their standards the man must have

crossed some serious lines. They come to him and

he has money in shoeboxes.

Then, some time later,

another unpleasant thing happened to him. From his

house, there was a theft—not long ago. Well,

apparently people who steal money

watch television too, and they saw:

"Wow, this guy keeps cash in shoeboxes,"

and not long ago they broke into

his country house and stole 15 million rubles (about $225,000 at the time).

and some gold coins. So, in other words,

a rather specific kind of person, who worked in a

rather specific agency—the customs service—and whose

house we filmed and showed.

Let's look at that house once again.

Just a few seconds here. There, uh, you see

the flyover shot.

Look at this house, yes, and

admit that it hardly looks like the home of an honest

public servant. Right now there it goes,

flying by—you see that thing there with the

glass roof? That's where his pool is,

but does this look like the house

of an honest, uncorrupt

public servant? I'm not

demanding that they live in poverty.

His official salary is such that,

well, you can certainly live comfortably on it. But

this does not in any way look like explainable

income. This is a classic example

of illicit enrichment. What we are seeing

on the screen right now: 1,500

square meters, 200 million rubles (roughly $3 million at the time). He has no

income that could account for 200 million rubles. He has no

explanation for the boxes of money, the

cash that was being kept at

his home. But if a person keeps

cash in boxes, in a pantry or

in closets—where they were pulling this money out—then

there is probably even more in accounts or

hidden somewhere else, buried under the pool,

or stashed away—much more of it. And this

man,

is not a criminal. Unlike Lev

Ponomaryov, he has not spent a single day

behind bars anywhere. Well, after that scandal with

the money, he was removed from the customs service,

but after some time, there you go, on behalf of

all of us, he was

they appointed to the Asian Development Bank with

authorized capital. 7 billion rubles. 7 billion

dollars. Excuse me, what the hell? I mean,

why the hell is this happening? And once again I

return to the main theme of our

program, to Peskov’s statement that

poverty is linked to the consequences of

the war. So what, was it Hitler again who

appointed Belyaninov for us as

head of the state bank? No, that was done by

Putin.

The same people throw an old man in jail for 25

days, but this guy with his shoeboxes

they put into a government

position. And on our money he’ll

ride around in a black car, he’ll

fly on a private plane, he’ll

speak at forums in our name,

then come home, open

the closet, and take out a shoebox.

He opens one—it’s full, the next one is full too. He

shouts to his wife: "Honey,

come on, bring another box, shake one out

over there, go on, run out and buy

some sneakers, throw them out, give me another

box, because I need somewhere to stash

more money," and he stuffs it in there. Then he puts away

the closet, comes back, turns on the program,

and watches Sergei Brilyov there, who

is talking about how great life is in

Russia. And these people, you see, they’re not

criminals—they’re good people, just like

that totally wonderful guy named Vadim

Ampilonsky. And do you know what organization I hate

more than any other in

Russia? Well, it’s not the most powerful one,

but it’s the most loathsome. Of course, it’s not

the police, not the FSB (Russia’s security service), nothing like that. Not even

the presidential administration, because in terms of its

pointless harmfulness and stupidity,

it’s obviously Roskomnadzor—the absolute worst

people in the world, petty malicious

parasites who simply need to be

shut down, disbanded, fired en masse,

and humiliated along the way, driven out

with kicks, plain and simple. Here’s a man—

the worst person on earth works at

Roskomnadzor, this very Vadim

Ampilonsky, who was

the press secretary

for Roskomnadzor.

He and his friends will probably sue

me now too, because he’ll say: "I was

cleared." But what they did was

put fictitious employees—dead souls—on the books at

Roskomnadzor, a government

agency. Salaries were accrued to those

people, but they didn’t work, and they

split the money. So it was a pretty

classic corruption scheme. And there he was,

the press secretary, going out and

telling everyone

uh, that someone on the internet was

wrong. This had to be blocked and that had to

be blocked. He didn’t like Facebook,

or Twitter either—extremists everywhere.

And Ampilonsky knows, uh, something

that we don’t know. He’s supposed to have

broad powers. He knows which

websites we’re allowed to visit and which we’re not

allowed to. And while he was saying all that,

he would then go to the cashier and

collect the salary of a nonexistent

Roskomnadzor employee. And obviously,

this wasn’t something only Ampilonsky

could do; none of this could have happened

without the knowledge of Roskomnadzor’s

leadership. But now their case has been

closed, and he spent some time under house arrest

for a while. The total amount in this

fraud was 58 million rubles.

Then after house arrest he was released

under travel restrictions, and now he has returned

again. He has gone back to

Roskomnadzor and will go on telling

you, my dear viewers, which websites

you’re allowed to visit and which you’re not

allowed to, what counts as extremism and what doesn’t,

what needs to be blocked and what

doesn’t, and he’ll once again be sending me

this crap. I

regularly open my email, and there comes

this kind of notice from YouTube: "Dear

Alexei, uh, the authorities, the official

official bodies of the Russian state

authorities—Roskomnadzor—inform us

that you have prohibited content, and it must be

removed immediately or there will be legal

consequences. So please

decide for yourself what you’re going to

do about it. We are notifying you that your

content is supposed to be blocked."

So far, thank God, YouTube itself hasn’t

blocked it, but it writes to me: "Hello,

Navalny, your officials from your

country, your Vadim Ampilonsky, who

helped siphon off 58 million rubles there, thinks that

your program should be blocked,

and he’ll keep working there, and they’ll

keep lecturing us on how to live, and they’ll

keep believing they’re somehow above

us. They know what morality is.

They’re honest citizens. But I’m supposed to be in jail,

Lev Ponomaryov should be in jail, and your

websites should be blocked. And you

can’t go to a concert because

Vadim Ampilonsky doesn’t like it

or God knows who else.

Infuriating, right? And once again,

2019.

We need to unite and take

concrete action against these bastards. And

different kinds of action. If you don’t believe in

elections, then don’t vote. But if

you still do go vote, then

don’t vote mindlessly—vote

strategically. 2019. Vote

Fight [clears throat] by the metro

liberal.

On the one hand, it seems like

a rather marginal topic for Facebook, but on the other

hand, it’s a very important one, and I

still want to speak out about it. Today I

asked whether it was worth talking about,

because it’s one of those topics where an ordinary

person who speaks about it and

says everything they really think about it

just gets slammed, and nothing good comes

of it. So, uh, even

people who, broadly speaking,

more or less agree with me prefer to stay

silent on this subject, because nothing

good comes of it. Still, well,

ours is a particular kind of program, and

I’m going to say everything I think about it.

Especially since this discussion comes up

all the time. Before every election, we

end up having a discussion about the so-called

“bright little people.” And there are people like that,

there really are—I put it that way,

“bright little people,” with a certain sarcastic,

dismissive edge. They are good

people; they are involved in

charity, they save children,

people, adults, uh, little ones,

the sick, the dying. They do good

work. But while they are doing good work,

when elections come around, for some reason they

start supporting villains and ghouls

who are the very ones who deprived the sick of medicine,

the dying of hospices, children of pediatric

medicines, and so on—who ruined

education and healthcare. They support them

because they say, “Well,

we’re charity workers, and we can squeeze 16 kopecks

out of the state.” So we’ll support

these villains because, well, because

someone needs those 16 kopecks right now. And

they really are needed by a person whose

child is sick; that person couldn’t care less

who is supporting whom. They

want, here and now, for their

child to get an operation. Such people

help make that operation happen, but, uh,

sometimes some of them support

Putin. And every time, a wild

argument breaks out. And the biggest argument

in recent years was in 2012,

when Chulpan Khamatova, the well-known

actress and well-known philanthropist, uh,

supported Putin. Let’s watch

31 seconds of it. So Chulpan Khamatova—well,

what a good woman, right? Uh, a good

actress. If I remember correctly, she even went to some

rallies back then. And then in

2012, right after

the election fraud, after all

that Churov business, and that Medvedev-era

“Churov, you’re simply a magician” (a famous ironic remark about election results), after all

that lying and deceit, she went out and

endorsed Putin. 31 seconds of

Chulpan Khamatova.

[music]

In our lives, nothing is more important than the health

of children. Vladimir Putin has never remained

indifferent to any request from the

Gift of Life Foundation and the doctors the foundation

supports. Every promise made

by Vladimir Putin to the Gift of Life Foundation

has always been fulfilled. Help must

be tangible, and that is why I will

vote for him. [music]

Well, you understand, on the one hand,

this is genuinely a person who saves

lives, raises money, doesn’t take

that money for herself, raises money,

and gives it to sick children for treatment

of sick children or sick adults.

[snorts] Uh,

but at the same time she supports Putin. And in

that sense, uh, you can see a kind of

total hypocrisy, because, well, you’re

supporting Putin, who for 20 years—

well, not 20 at that point, less, but still—

all the same

is responsible for the fact that healthcare funding

in Russia is underfunded.

After all,

that’s why Peskov has a watch worth 32 million rubles (about hundreds of thousands of U.S. dollars),

because someone else doesn’t have money for

treatment. And Chulpan Khamatova knows that. Uh,

yet she supports him anyway. And then, uh,

later there was also some completely

disgusting episode. They put out

a statement—everyone was outraged and said:

“Chulpan, why are you doing this? This is

2012, after all.” And they released

a statement to the effect that, well,

basically, she had been forced. There was an article by her

press secretary saying she had recorded it because, well,

it was as if Putin had practically said to

her, “If you don’t record

something in my support, I’ll kill and eat

all your children, and you won’t get a single

kopeck for treatment.” I even wrote a post back then

specifically saying that if that were true,

then all the more so it would be impossible

to support a person like that, someone who

blackmails you by threatening to deprive children

of money. And so this, uh, discussion keeps going

constantly.

And journalist Ksenia Larina very aptly

described the latest round of this

discussion—which I happened to trigger—as

a “liberal brawl in the subway” (a sarcastic phrase). Because

Facebook is always splitting into

a camp of the uncompromising, who

say that there are no

circumstances under which you can

give moral support to Putin’s

regime. After all, well, these days no one is

being forced with a gun to their temple. Just

go about your business, please,

your noble work, save people. But

why do you rush out to support him in

elections, when he is the one who robbed this

healthcare? Ah, well, there’s another

side that says: "Well, it doesn’t matter,

if they’re doing good work, uh, then let

them do whatever they want." And so

a small number of people, yes,

they gathered around the Liberal Metro, and

started a fight. Once again, this

fight broke out because, uh-uh,

there is this well-known

film critic, Anton Dolin, who somehow

ended up taking the brunt of it from

me more than anyone else, although he is, of course,

certainly not the worst person

in the world. He appeared on the Navalny

Live channel, recorded some videos,

but, uh, he wrote a post that I found very

unpleasant, and with this kind of

super-hypocritical framing. "Maybe I’m

stupid, and now you’ll prove it to me. Well,

I just can’t understand why British

citizenship for Brilev is a sensation.

Why is it considered disgraceful, and where exactly is the hidden

outrageous hypocrisy here? It seems to me

that this post itself contained

that outrageous hypocrisy, because Anton Dolin understands

perfectly well what’s going on, but he

is dancing a certain kind of dance

that a person is expected to dance when he

wants to be a suckling calf for two

cows. He works both here and there. Well,

he does good things. He doesn’t

speak about politics; he

talks about cinema. It’s just that he talks about

cinema both on Echo of Moscow and on

Mayak radio, and on the program Vesti

Nedeli on Radio Vesti, where

Vladimir Solovyov works. So in that sense,

he is being paid from the same pot as

Vladimir Solovyov. He isn’t being paid

for lies; he is being paid

simply to talk about cinema.

Well, I wrote quite, really, harshly

that this was absolutely

servility. If you’ve ended up in

some kind of situation, uh, where you

work like this—well, that’s how your

life turned out. Fine, lots of people work on

Channel One, Channel Two, for the state,

in all sorts of public service jobs. In

our country, half the people work in

the public sector. But, uh, then

keep quiet. If you can’t refuse income

from VGTRK structures (Russia’s state broadcasting company),

then just keep quiet. But when you

come out and start defending Sergei

Brilev, who also works there in the

VGTRK system, that is, of course, servility.

And then everyone rushed to defend him and

say what a, well, terrible person I

am, that I was rude to him, and Ksenia Larina

defended me, and someone else criticized me, and

then defended me, and then defended and criticized me again.

But this whole scandal was drowned out by something much

bigger, which is what I actually

want to speak about, despite

the fact that it’s the most dangerous topic. And

that’s because

literally a day after the start of

this liberal infighting, there is this

well-known

[snorts] well-known figure in

the charity movement, Nyuta

Federmesser. She

was one of the

pioneers in creating hospices, that is,

institutions where people who are terminally

ill or very elderly

spend their final days. In Russia, they are often kept in nursing homes

or in hospitals in

absolutely horrific conditions. And so

she began creating these kinds of institutions, well,

where a person can somehow live out the rest

of their life with dignity. So she does

very noble work, and used to do it

simply as a philanthropist.

She is doing very noble work. And

now, already being effectively, well,

a state-funded employee, she heads, well,

she is essentially the chief physician of a hospital,

the head of such-and-such institution. And, on the

one hand, everyone knows her achievements,

and she does good things. On the other

hand, when the Moscow mayoral

election took place, she came out in support of the mayor

of Moscow. She became one of his official campaign representatives,

writing, uh—someone sent me this

post and said it was the worst post in the history of

Facebook. I agree with that. An absolutely

disgusting and ultra-hypocritical post,

about why she supports

Sobyanin. And, uh, here are these

wonderful words: "Guys, well, I’m not going to talk

about construction, about paving tiles, about

five-story apartment blocks, about garbage. I don’t understand any of

that," she says. You see,

once again, like Anton Dolin,

she opens her eyes wide and says:

"Good Lord, what politics, what rallies,

I don’t understand any of that." Well, but

the Third Ring Road was done so well by

Sergei Semyonovich. Just look,

he decorated everything with lights. And here he

put some little boats into the

stream. And the bike lane is just wonderful.

I don’t understand anything else. So why

are you criticizing Sobyanin in my comments

and writing about things like

the arrest of Lev Ponomaryov (a Russian human rights activist), who was

arrested—an old man—and jailed for 25

days because Moscow City Hall would not

allow old man Lev Ponomaryov

to walk down a Moscow street. Don’t write to me about

that. I know nothing about it, and I don’t

want to know. I’m just doing my

noble work and simply supporting

Sergei Semyonovich Sobyanin. And, well, I

have this attitude of seeing what’s here and not seeing what’s there.

And now this same Nyuta

Federmesser. It was not enough for her just to support

Sergei Semyonovich Sobyanin; she joined

the United

Popular Front. That is,

well, an organization whose purpose is

to support the national leader, Vladimir

Vladimirovich Putin. They help him,

they promote his ideas for him, his ideas. They

do everything they can to make sure Vladimir Vladimirovich

Putin stays in power longer. And, well,

of course, this caused a real

cognitive dissonance in people's minds, because

on the one hand, here is this typical

bright, kind person who does

good work, genuinely, without irony, and

if you say anything against her, people will

tell you: "Shut up there on your

YouTube channel—try saving as many people

as she has."

But on the other hand, this person

is giving political support

to exactly those bastards, those very people

who keep these dying people in

monstrous hospitals.

It was Putin, together with Peskov, Navka, and

all the rest, who turned Russian

hospitals into what they are now.

And this wonderful Nyuta, she thanks

him—says thank you. There it is: Sergei Semyonovich,

Vladimir Vladimirovich, allocate money for

a hospice for 200 people. And she knows perfectly well

that 20,000 people will get

no hospice care at all, because Putin and

Sobyanin will steal the money—or rather, their teams will—

that should have gone to those very hospices. They will help

one person. And that is, well, that is

truly a dilemma. This person

needs help right here and right now.

He does not care about Putin or Sobyanin, he does not care

about me. Right now,

he has two weeks left to live, and he wants

to lie—not, excuse me, in a puddle of urine,

but at least on a reasonably clean sheet. And

in that sense, he is grateful to

wonderful Nyuta. But at the same time, 10,000

people will still die on some kind of

there will not even be sheets soaked

in urine. There will be some kind of oilcloth

or nothing at all. Well, you know

a Russian nursing home, and any

institution where such

terminally ill, dying people are kept—it is, it is

something monstrous. It is a kind of final

stage of hell. It is an absolute nightmare. And

this is happening in a country with plenty of

oil money, where the budget for

health care and social services is being cut

in order to give more money to Putin's

National Guard (Rosgvardiya), to Putin's security apparatus, to give

money to Roskomnadzor, to Ampelonsky, and

to Dmitry Peskov. And Nyuta Federmesser, she

supports all of them. And I think that

this discussion is missing one

important detail.

I did a simple thing. I am, well, the kind of

person who,

well, maybe someone could

reproach me for even digging into

this, but I went and looked up her income.

And her income—

she is a municipal employee, and her income is

5 million rubles a year. In that sense, it seems to me

the situation,

or rather, the context of the discussion should not

be framed as whether she is a saintly person or not

a saintly person. Whether she has the right or not—

she is a saintly person, she does

good work, and for that she receives from us

an excellent salary of 5 million rubles a year.

Maybe—I'm not saying that we are

overpaying her, or that she stole anything, or that

she is undeserving; maybe she ought

to be paid even more—but this is a normal

salary. Maybe she spends all of it

on the poor, maybe she keeps it

for herself. But in any case, we paid for her

noble work. We paid for

the noble work of every chief physician. We

paid for the noble work of teachers,

firefighters, janitors. We gave

decent money. It is great work.

Thank you very much. But we paid for it.

It is a kind of social contract. We,

as taxpayers, paid,

and said: "Thank you very much." And at this point,

it seems to me, we have the right

to be outraged or, at the very least, we

have the right to discuss the fact that people

whom we paid then also

run off and join the ONF (All-Russia People's Front) and provide

political support. And what matters here is

specifically political support for those who

rob

sick children, for those who kill

sick old people. I am not even—this is not

a figure of speech, I am not saying this as some kind of

metaphor. They really are taking away

medicine from sick children. It was not Pushkin

who passed these idiotic laws,

uh, the one an airport was named after. It was

not Lomonosov who arranged any of this. It is

not the aftermath of war. The fact that in Russia

older people are now in such terrible

conditions—that was done by Putin. And Nyuta

Federmesser is now helping Putin

remain in power and continue

robbing the unfortunate, the sick,

the suffering, and the dying. Sadly, that is the case.

She is, of course, helping some people,

helping certain people very effectively.

A noble person—she could have been doing

something else, but she is not Sergei

Brilyov, she is not engaged in some kind of

propaganda; she is simply doing her

job. But for some reason

she decided that simply doing

her job was not enough; she decided to stand there, when

Putin is standing somewhere, to be on the same...

at yet another press conference, she will be

standing behind his back and doing everything she can to ensure

that he remains in power. And for that,

all these bright, well-meaning people, no matter how

highly we may think of them, we must

tell them this. And I believe that here

there is no need to be shy, no need

to worry; there is no contradiction at all.

We should love them for the fact that they

are doing good work, but at the same time we should not

go easy on them, and we should

criticize them when they do not speak out as

trusted representatives, or when they join

all sorts of ONFs (the All-Russia People's Front, a pro-Kremlin movement) and act as stooges.

You save one person and kill 300 others.

I got carried away with this toxic topic, and so

I missed something. By the way, here

people are writing to me that the same Ksenia Larina

recalled that Ksenia Larina, who is a

journalist from Echo of Moscow and came up with this

great meme, the 'metro-liberal scuffle,'

that a few years ago Putin, and there

was almost a proposal to name half of Kaliningrad

Region after Kant,

and now, you see, he is an enemy of the people.

That is also quite an important point. I

cannot help talking about rappers. This is,

probably already some kind of tradition

on our program. We have to discuss

rappers, because what is happening right now

is very funny. In general,

do you remember that famous meme, Hello Fellow

Kids, which is often used on

the internet when people want to show something

funny, when some, uh,

adults pretend to be, um,

teenagers of some sort in order to

win their trust. Let's watch 10 seconds

of this meme just to

remind you what it looks like.

[music]

That is exactly what our

government looks like. This is Putin, uh, having put on

a baseball cap, turned backward. He has

a skateboard, and whatever else he read about

there on VKontakte as being the latest

trendy things. They told him, 'Well, a vape,

you also need a vape.' And so he walks around with a vape or

I do not know what else. And then they start

loving rappers. And now they are already holding

some kind of roundtables. But after all,

rappers do have influence. Well, among

young people, they are these protest-minded guys.

They stood up for the rapper Husky, forcing

them, basically, to release rapper Husky.

So now the authorities, just as they once

tried to win over video bloggers,

to campaign through them. Remember, Sasha Spilberg

spoke in the State Duma? Now they love

rappers, and they themselves have become rappers,

because Dmitry Kiselyov was rapping.

What's more, he will be hosting

a rap festival on a nudist beach in

Crimea.

[snorts]

So it is like that line, if not for

Dmitry Kiselyov, there would be NATO

soldiers there. But thanks to the Russian

state, in Koktebel

Krylov

Kiselyov, sorry, on a nudist beach

will be hosting a rap festival. Let's

watch a few seconds of how he was

rapping on his program.

The forerunner of rap in the Russian

poetic tradition, of course, was

Vladimir Mayakovsky. Here, listen to a passage from

his poem *Good!* written for the

tenth anniversary of the October Revolution.

The palace was built for tsars by shootings. Tsars

were born, lived, and grew old. The palace never

thought about a fidgety upstart. It never imagined

that in the bed once faithful to the tsarina

some mere trial

lawyer would sprawl. From eagles, power, blankets, and

lace, the trial lawyer's head

spins.

Well, how is that not rap? Isn't it cool?

Isn't it cool? Yo, he should have said, isn't it

cool? Yo, and a baseball cap turned

backward. That is what

was missing here to make

this fully match the Hello

Fellow Kids meme. And today in the State Duma

it was really something; I saw some very funny,

uh,

oh, there was a roundtable with rappers. And

there, in the State Duma, where people sit

who receive salaries from us

of 450,000 rubles a month, they were holding a roundtable with

rappers. And there, in fact, there were

these little nameplates, you know, the kind that

say 'Deputy So-and-So'; and there it said

'Rapper Ptakha, rapper Dzhigan.'

I find it very funny, uh,

my assistant Ilya, who was

preparing this, wrote 'rapper Dzhigan.' Well, that

is, he understands rap exactly

on Dmitry Kiselyov's level. And it is

just amazing how they are now, basically,

discussing things with rappers.

And they invited Ptakha, that very same

Ptakha; let's watch a few more seconds

of the guy who recorded these

pro-government rap tracks against people who go

to rallies. Rapper Ptakha goes hard for Putin.

Stupid, banal, you [music] dimwits.

It's strange to be a patriot while backing gay Uncle

Sam. To run off to another country—the system will send you

there while you pretend to fight the unbearable [music]

popular order. Yeltsin. I remember

democracy. It built a slaughterhouse. Democratic

boom. Freedom 217. Rich kids sit on

the poles. [music] The hope of the whole nation.

Russian Federation vibes, Ptakha from the Center. To everyone

sensible, greetings and have a great [music]

summer.

So they held this roundtable. And

I think all of this will lead to the fact

that we’ll continue to see a large

amount of this crap, because, well,

pro-government rappers are easy to buy off,

— you can give them small amounts of money. Right now they’ll be

heavily motivated by the promise that,

“Guys, your concerts won’t be

banned.” Take the group IC3PEAK, for example — well, they’re not

rappers, but they’re musicians nonetheless,

and every trip to every city turns into

a full-scale special operation.

On the one hand it’s funny, but on the other

hand, these musicians will go broke,

and they won’t be able to tour,

or record albums — it’ll be

very hard for them. And they’ll be told, “Come on, guys,

just, yo, say something

nice about Putin, and everything will be

great for you.” But

what’s interesting is that the level of officialdom and

the level of hypocrisy in all of this

is such that even Roman Zhigan himself,

who came to the State Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament) for the roundtable,

simply couldn’t take it anymore at some point,

— he got up and walked out. Let’s watch these

few seconds.

Rappers set 18+ restrictions

so that there won’t be complaints against them. For example,

for example,

we don’t set any

restrictions at all — the restrictions are set

by the organizers.

The organizers,

yes. The organization sets the restriction.

I’m very sorry. Well, I’m very

sorry. This conversation has already become about nothing.

People are leaving — one has left, another didn’t even

show up. I’ll say it once again: on January 24,

the film *B* will be in theaters across the country.

Thank you, I’m leaving. I have nothing left

to talk about. All the best to everyone.

Alright, see you.

This conversation is about nothing, bro. You could

keep dragging this out and discussing it for another 20 years.

It’s about nothing.

[clears throat]

You could drag this out for another 20 years. And rapper Zhigan

didn’t like that. He left,

because, well, the level of hypocrisy,

official lying, and sheer meaninglessness was

so extreme that, well, they’re not going to

succeed. Obviously, they’ll have some

some kind of

controlled

rapper-slaves. Of course they will, but even

those who agreed to come to an event like this

just end up walking out. Because,

it’s so nauseating that

no amount of money and no permission to hold

concerts can make up for how disgusting it is. And,

forgive the word, the sheer shame/cringe

of taking part in an event like this with

such utterly vile people, who

ought to be thrown out. And

in some positive, in some

fortunate cases, we really do

throw them out. And that famous woman with the

hairstyle, Senator Petrenko, has finally

left the Federation Council (Russia’s upper house of parliament) for one

simple reason: because people in

Khakassia voted for a Communist governor.

He needed to be elected,

never mind that he’s a Communist — if only so that

the newly elected governor

Konovalov could kick her the hell out of

the Federation Council, where for a huge

salary Senator Petrenko had been sitting

all these years, spouting monstrous

nonsense and doing nothing useful — in other words,

she really was a burden, a harm, and

a laughingstock who discredited the entire

legislative branch. And how unhappy she was, how

upset she was when they were kicking her

out of there. I mean, here was a person who

sat there and sat there and thought she would sit there

for life — after all, she’s for Putin. Putin

supports her. Putin spoke there in

Khakassia, so the “right” person would be elected. And

“I’ll stay,” thought Senator

Petrenko. But Putin spoke, and people

voted the other way. So,

you know, 40 seconds, 40 seconds — I’ve already gone over

my time, but let’s look at the

expression on Senator Petrenko’s face when

they were telling her what a

wonderful person she is. Well, as we remove her from

the public payroll.

I would also like to say separately about Senator

Valentina Aleksandrovna Petrenko,

who since 2000

has, uh, been serving in the Federation Council,

and who served as chair of the committee

on social policy.

Valentina Aleksandrovna was one of the most

vivid, proactive,

and responsible senators, carrying out

enormously important work both in

the upper chamber and in her extensive

public work. She organized the

Mothers of Russia movement,

which truly made itself heard in our country.

Dear Valentina Aleksandrovna, I want to

sincerely thank you for your work.

Great facial expression. You can just see it:

she’s sitting there like,

“You bastards in Khakassia, you didn’t vote the way

you were supposed to, so now I

have to leave.” And returning again to

our 2019 project.

We need to organize ourselves

so that we vote in such a way that

people like this get thrown out

of these long-held comfortable positions —

all these Senator Petrenkos. They gave her

a Christmas tree, a little New Year tree,

to Senator Petrenko and sent her home.

So let’s always vote in such a way

that all these people

to present each of these wonderful people with a Christmas tree and send them off

home. And then, after some time,

they’ll end up in the defendant’s dock. See you

next Thursday.

[music]