Candidate ratings, the progress of the strike, kill whoever you want

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Hello everyone, Moscow 20:18, Alexei is in the studio.

Navalny, or the mastermind behind the Perm

massacre, as the Tsargrad TV channel called me this week.

We'll talk a bit more about that

a little later. What does

a happy person look like? Who is a happy

person, what do they look like? Look here:

I am completely happy, because happiness

is satisfaction with what you do.

We are carrying out our voters' strike,

and it's working, and that is very

cool. It really does make me

genuinely happy, and it makes

our entire штаб (campaign headquarters) happy too. Because what

happened this week? All

the political news this

week was about how these

authorities, in every possible way, are trying to drag

people to the polls. We also discussed

the naked dancing—not completely naked,

just slightly naked—students from Ulyanovsk.

Well done to them, they danced wonderfully. They

will probably also take part in

the voters' strike, judging by the fact that

they've already started being investigated for that dance by

the prosecutor's office. But apart from the nearly naked

students, all the news in one way or another

concerned new inventions: how exactly

to force people to vote. It has been announced that

at the same time as the election there will be

some kind of contests on

neighborhood improvement—like, come vote

not only to re-elect

Putin, but also to vote for some

little mushroom, what color it will be in your

courtyard, school referendums, and so on and

so forth. Of course, my favorite this

week is the proud city of Yekaterinburg, where it was

announced that people could ride the ice slides

for free if they were for the election and

for participating in the election, and if they said

the special password:

"I'm for the election." This is, of course, astonishing,

truly something else. I mean, it's very,

very cool—everything is working for us, and we

can see that the authorities have chosen this

interesting tactic. On the one hand, they are

now very actively fighting our

voters' strike; on the other hand,

they are probably not capable of

resisting the mass character of our movement,

because something remarkable has happened

with the January 28 protest. I'll start with that right away, because

that's the main thing we need

to talk about now. In the first days, when we announced

that there would be a protest, they told us

nothing would come of it. Then, when we

started submitting applications, we were told:

basically,

rejections everywhere, they started issuing rejections

all over. In Khabarovsk they even jailed our coordinator for 15

days just two

hours after he brought in the application,

simply because he had submitted it—they immediately

took him to court and locked him up for 15 days. But

now, apparently, the concept has changed, and I

don't know what exactly they decided there.

Some Kremlin analysts and political commentators

will explain it, perhaps. Maybe they don't want

images of mass

detentions or something like that on the eve of

the presidential election, because they realized

that people would come to the protest anyway.

protest.

They are now approving things for us on a massive scale, and

there are now more than 90

cities participating, and almost everywhere

the protests have been approved. They approved them in such

cities that our lawyers refuse

to believe it—in Sochi,

where for ages nothing has ever

been approved, and now we can go to a rally there.

In Sochi, in the wonderful venue; in

Rostov-on-Don too—that is, in cities

like these. In Kazan they approved

the protest—where usually they approve absolutely nothing.

It's completely astonishing. There are

a few

especially stubborn cities, though—Ufa,

Arkhangelsk,

Ryazan, Murmansk. But those rejections

that happened there were at the first stage. I

think maybe they will reconsider

and approve something for us there.

As for Moscow and St. Petersburg, as usual the authorities

are showing off. In Moscow we were told

that we should go to Shchukino. Our

answer is very simple: you might

be happy about that,

but how could we possibly agree to such

illegal actions? People have the

right to rally where they submitted

their notice under the notification procedure. Therefore

I can say absolutely clearly that in

Moscow, as in St. Petersburg, where the local authorities are also

apparently going to invent

something similar, the protest will take place in

full compliance with the law and with the notice filed.

That's our formula, so that they, you know, don't

arrest me right here from this studio for

calling for something. I am saying

that the protest will take place in

full compliance with the law. So,

guys, don't make any plans for January 28.

Take part. These will be approved

actions, and it's very important to come to them, because

the Kremlin aren't fools either—they think

General Frost will fight us on their behalf. January 28

in Russia is not exactly a warm

date, especially since in all the cities where we're

holding these protests—including Yakutsk—

it's not hard to imagine how many

degrees below zero it will be in Yakutsk, but

You still have to go—there is nothing more

important from a political point of view, that's

it. There is nothing—you can't write something

important, you can't say something important, you can't

do something important. No one can—

not me, not you—do anything more important

than physically being present at the rally on the 28th

01, because this is the main mechanism

for putting pressure on the authorities in every country, in

every city, at all times—the most

important, the main way to apply pressure, the most

important way to express discontent,

the most important way to mobilize people

around us. We are carrying out a voters' strike,

and as part of this strike we

are calling on everyone else not to participate,

to campaign against it, but to monitor

the elections.

So, from the point of view of achieving our

political goals,

there is nothing more important we can do.

In the description of this broadcast, find the link,

register, and go in your city

without fail. It looks like we'll quite

peacefully have a nice walk and, well,

tell them everything we wanted to say, see

each other, and disperse without any detentions.

But even if there were detentions,

or there will be, that's nothing—it absolutely does not

change anything. We have to go, otherwise nothing will

work out for us. At the same time, it's quite

clear from their strategy that they

are forced to approve these rallies for us,

to authorize them, because otherwise once again there will

be detentions and a dispersal, and across

the whole country. But we have simply felt

a sharp increase in pressure on all our

headquarters, and right now in St. Petersburg

as I understand it, the search is still continuing in

our office—already at the stage of seizing

materials. Some people simply came in

saying that a report had come in that

something was happening here,

something illegal, and as part of checking

that report they, well, threw everyone out of

the office except the coordinator. Right now they are

simply confiscating all the laptops,

printers, some personal belongings, leaflets—

well, basically everything they can take away. In other words,

they're robbing us—they've carried out a raid.

The St. Petersburg police carried out

a raid on our—so, here is a very short video from

our St. Petersburg office.

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So, we've already had two searches, two

searches in Veliky Novgorod, a search in

Cheboksary,

yes, in Cheboksary, a search in Penza, and right now

a search in St. Petersburg, and we understand that they

are going to keep doing this again and again and again. It

all follows a very curious kind of pattern.

This is how it all happens:

the first thing they do when they come in is

start taping over the cameras. We

equipped all our offices with cameras so that

there would be some record. Here, you can see now

this video from Cheboksary: as soon as they

come in, some operative right here

in the corner—a guy in plain clothes, apparently

from Center E (Russia's anti-extremism police unit),

has adhesive tape ready, and with that tape he

walks around covering the camera. There, he spotted

another camera, goes, goes, goes, pretends

like he's just walking past,

and then—there, nothing is visible. And this is

the pattern all these searches follow. They are

absolutely illegal, of course. I mean, how

can you just come into someone's organization?

Imagine you work somewhere—

a legal entity,

not a private residence, your office—and some

police officers come in and say, listen, well,

we received a report that you have

extremist materials,

or that you have a Navalny leaflet. Your

competitor called and said, hey, they have

Navalny leaflets at such-and-such address.

They come in there and simply start confiscating

computers. What will happen to your business?

Well, naturally, your business will shut down

immediately. This is what is happening

in the country right now. This is what they

will tell us they are allowed to do by law. But

that raises the question: do we even need

such a law? Do we need this kind of police? Do we need

this kind of judicial system that permits

this? It's awful, and it is infuriating.

Of course we are suffering material losses.

Of course we will be asking you

to go to the Navalny 2018 website

to the donations section and send money again

so that we can continue all

this activity. But on the other hand,

it's actually great that all of this

works—even our little leaflet campaign, which

many people like

to laugh at because, you know, it seems to me

they think it's not real. But people are making

leaflets, posting them in the descriptions—

there is also a leaflet in the description of this broadcast.

You can print it out. And all of this

is not some fake campaigning—this is

real campaigning. Look, at the

Far Eastern University, in a dormitory,

students

were visited because there had been a report: these

students were distributing leaflets. By the way,

the students turned out to be solid people,

not the timid sort. They called

a lawyer at the headquarters and asked what to do.

The lawyer said: tell those

police officers to get lost. They did, were taken to the

station, and then released. What can they

do to these people? This is absolutely

legal activity. So

please keep doing it. And

now I'll show you a short clip

from a wonderful video that

One of the campaigners in Nizhny Novgorod filmed it.

About how he did it—let's

watch for 31 seconds.

And look at that pipe—what a huge pipe, calling out.

This is Lobachevsky... and here's the dorm.

Actually, this is Lobachevsky campus, and here is

the local landmark—here is the real

weapon of a campaigner.

For the voters' strike, of course,

we got truly enormous pleasure

today from the head of the Central

Election Commission, Ella Pamfilova, who really

really made our day when we saw

the special statement from the Central

Election Commission regarding this

leaflet.

They disliked it so much that they

actually put out a press release that

was then quoted by the state

news agency TASS, saying that there were some

terrible people—without mentioning me—and to that

I say: that's us, that's us, Ella Pamfilova, you know

it's us, following in your footsteps, who made

this especially sinister leaflet. And this is not our

leaflet—we confirm that. So, friends, in light

of the fact that the Central Election Commission disliked it so much,

the Central Election Commission

there's a separate link in the description of this

broadcast where you can download this leaflet. There

you'll find the leaflet as we made it. But we

sat down and thought: if a miracle happened,

if Ella Pamfilova stopped lying the way

she does every day, what would she

write in the leaflet? And we put together a

truthful one.

It says here, from Ella Pamfilova:

"Dear voters, on March 18

the reappointment of Vladimir

Putin will take place. Be sure to come. We

traditionally call this an election. Don't want

to go to the polling station? No need to worry—we'll have contests

and pastries.

That's excellent payment for

taking part in the performance. Please

come, spit on your future, and

do what the bosses tell you. This

is the real, true, genuine leaflet

from Ella Pamfilova. So print it out,

put it up in your building entrance, if it's torn down then put it up again.

We put it up, and it works. Enjoy

watching how it works. You'll see how

very soon the janitors will come running,

special workers from these

social agencies will run through apartment entrances and

around buildings, persuading people to go vote.

This is the reaction to our strike, and it's going

great—it could go even better

if you join in. Well,

basically, we're ready to tell

you how this election will end. That is, you

understand that it will not end with

Putin's reelection, but with Putin's reappointment.

That's what they invented it for. But today we

are already ready to tell you the details.

You don't need to wait until March 18

to know the election results.

I promised on the previous broadcast that

we had launched—would launch—our sociological

service, especially given that

the Levada Center, the last independent

sociological center, was banned from

publishing candidate ratings—indeed,

from publishing any election-related data at all.

So we launched our own service. It

will conduct one sociological survey

a week—either nationwide or a major regional one.

Our sociological service

has been operating since 2013, and we

have repeatedly proven that we make election forecasts

better than most

polling services. We absolutely

do not lie; we do everything according to methodology.

It makes no sense for us to lie. It's much

more important that you trust us, because

the sociological service operates on your money,

and so if you see that

the result does not match our forecast,

well, then stop giving it money.

That is why our sociological service

works very, very accurately. And now,

attention:

I will tell you about some very unexpected

election results. So then, first

let's look at the slide on awareness of

the election. You can see that many people

are indeed saying, saying

that there is a choice and that there is

an election coming, and therefore

almost all voters know that the election

will take place in the Russian Federation. In that

sense, television has done its job.

Let's look at the next slide.

It's very interesting. We asked:

who has declared their intention

to take part in the election? And you can see that

everyone, of course, knows about Putin; everyone knows

about Sobchak as well—this has been actively

covered on television. It was a big

topic. Zhirinovsky, Yavlinsky...

Take note—this is very interesting:

people know about Grudinin, and they know about Zyuganov.

This is a separate and very interesting

thing that we wanted

to study, because Grudinin

suddenly appeared like this, whereas traditionally

it was Zyuganov who took part, and in general we wanted

to understand

whether people know that there is such a person as Grudinin,

whether they know that he is running. But we see

that quite a lot of people do know, but

quite a lot of people still think

that Zyuganov is taking part in the election. In this

connection, we

separately asked an open-ended question: whom

did the Communist Party of the Russian Federation nominate, and we got rather

curious results. Where is the slide? Here

it is, our slide. We see that the larger share

of people—up to 33 percent—are, after all, aware.

that the CPRF (Communist Party of the Russian Federation) nominated Grudinin, but 15

percent of voters still

because, by the way, a huge number

I don't know, among those who think they know something

15 percent of people say that

that

Zyuganov was the one who was nominated at all; that's also a

interesting thing showing

just how little attention is being paid to this election

and how, generally speaking, the candidates themselves

have not

really been engaged in their own campaigns

and have not managed to get these points across. Well, actually

speaking, we've discussed many times that

it's impossible to run a campaign for three

months; it's impossible for a new person to enter the race

and achieve any high results

without actively running a campaign for at least

a year. So that means the result

And the most interesting thing is: who would you

vote for if the election were held

next weekend? Please take a look

at the results.

This is what we see out of 100 percent:

an unquestionable victory for Putin.

Interestingly, the results are practically the same

for Zhirinovsky and Grudinin.

And then, really at the level of

the statistical margin of error, there are Sobchak

and Titov, and they are close, given the fairly large though not enormous

number of decided voters.

And we have one final slide with which we can

now present our official current

forecast of what the result will be. We have

a special model for how we will—how

we calculate the undecided voters. You saw

that they were 21 percent, but when it comes to the election, those

who actually come and cast their ballots—we

developed a model which, in the State Duma

elections, quite accurately and correctly

predicted the results. So on the final

slide we show what the

election results on the 8th will be

the election on December 18: Vladimir Putin

will win—no, no, that's the wrong slide, we need

the last slide.

Sorry about that little mishap.

Someone's going to get a scolding. There, please.

Look, you can see this is roughly the kind of

result. Of course, every week we will

be polling: Vladimir Putin will get 78

percent—certainly more than 70.

The only thing that creates even a little—not even

intrigue, but some curiosity—is

who will take second place:

Zhirinovsky or Gru-

dinin. Everyone else will get around

one percent. And, well, I think, I think

that I have hardly just now

greatly surprised or shocked anyone,

because this was predetermined.

Remember those famous meetings from which

there were leaks saying that the presidential administration

had set a target of 70/70—70

percent turnout and at least 70

percent for Putin. So, moving toward

that result, they sat down,

conducted polling, and calculated which

candidates needed to be allowed onto the ballot or

persuaded into the race so that

Putin would guarantee himself a result of more than

70, and it worked perfectly. They

removed me—the candidate who was running

a real campaign—and all the

others

were given such a wonderful setup.

So, guys, I just wanted to address

those who are still under some illusions,

rather funny ones: “What about a second round?”

“What if we do something?” “What if

there's some kind of protest vote?” “What if there are

a lot of invalid ballots,”

and therefore there will be a second round?” There will be no

second round. It cannot happen.

These people sat down and did the math—they're not

stupid. They conducted polling and figured out

whom they needed to bring into the election,

what they had to do in order to get

this kind of result. And if, of course, it is terribly important to you,

if this is your political goal

and your idea of what matters now

for the country is that

we need to help Grudinin take second

place, or conversely help Zhirinovsky

take second place, then your vote

matters in terms of who will take second

place—Grudinin or Zhirinovsky—with

a result of less than ten percent.

Then go ahead, then go. I won't even

try to talk you out of it. But if you still

believe that elections are something more

than a competition for second place

between the LDPR and Communist candidates, then don't

go there. Don't be part of this

disgrace. If you go there, then there

you are signing your name under it: “I recognize all this, I consider

this an election, and your candidate will get his

lawful one percent—or 78.”

If that's what interests you, vote for Putin. But don't

be part of all this. We must, on the whole,

refuse to recognize this as an election.

We must very actively persuade people

that those 78 percent mean

nothing. If you go there, then for you those 78

percent will mean that you elected

a president for yourselves, that this is a real

president who became president

thanks to votes, thanks to voting. But if you

do not go there, that is your personal

position, indicating that you do not

recognize it, that you are not part of it. All of this is

fraud; it is a pre-programmed

result. We will

be making forecasts like this, forecasts like this,

polls like this

every week. Next week we will have

a poll on Yekaterinburg. Why do we

want to do that as well? We want to find out what

what big cities think

What we’ve just shown you is the overall

picture for Russia as a whole, with the margin of error, by the way, being

roughly three and a half percent, so

in fact, among all those who

support Yavlinsky, Sobchak, Tsvetkov

the percentages are small — it’s all about the same

and within the margin of error, naturally

there is some variation there, but within that range nothing

will change. But there is, again, this

idea worth testing: that in

big cities everything is completely different, that Moscow

will completely change everything with its vote,

that St. Petersburg will change everything,

that Novosibirsk and Yekaterinburg will change everything, and

we’re going to conduct a poll in Yekaterinburg. Why

there? Because it very accurately

predicts Moscow’s results. For

example, the vote for Prokhorov in

Moscow and in Yekaterinburg differed by

one hundredth of a percentage point. In Moscow

it’s simply very hard to conduct a poll because

of the city’s specifics: there are many

newcomers, and it’s hard to reach by phone those

who are eligible to vote. In Yekaterinburg

it’s easier, and the result is very

close to Moscow’s, and it’s a typical

large city, and based on

candidate ratings in Yekaterinburg, we

can forecast them very accurately for

any city with a population over one million. We’ll see,

of course, how all this plays out, but I think

the spread will be about the same. These

elections are predetermined; there is no need to take part in them.

Many thanks to all the volunteers

who took part in these surveys

and continue to take part. Come join us,

sign up — it’s very important. We want

to give people normal, honest

sociology. And now, here are two

images I want to show you

for the next topic.

Which image do you like more? Let’s

first look at image number one.

And now image number two. Which one do you

like more? Assuming you

liked the first image more, well,

everything there looks kind of cooler, right?

But in fact, it’s the same thing. The

first image follows from, or

emerges from, the second image, because in

the second image we have the famous sinkhole

in the city of Berezniki, Perm Krai (a region in Russia’s Urals),

where the Uralkali company is located.

Probably everyone has seen this image —

all the inhabitants of planet Earth. It’s extremely

popular on the internet. And in the first

image

we see the wonderful, stunning yacht

of the owner of that company, Mr. Rybolovlev.

Though that image is no longer even current. I

actually decided to tell you this because

Rybolovlev sold that yacht and ordered

himself a new superyacht with the

codename Project 1007. The exact

cost of this yacht is unknown, but

it is obvious that it will amount to

hundreds of millions of dollars, because

everyone says it’s some kind of mega-

modern superyacht. Why am I saying all this?

Because on January 28

this is one of the things we are protesting against, including

in the city of Berezniki, by the way,

where a rally has also been announced for the 28th

of January.

Because this is how Russia is structured: we have

huge raw-materials enterprises,

and these huge raw-materials enterprises

enrich only those who own them —

some

two or three oligarchs. How is our

tax system set up if in Berezniki they

cannot fill in the hole in the ground that

they themselves created, yet at the same time they order

yachts for themselves worth hundreds of millions of dollars?

Only in Russia could something like this happen;

you can imagine this only in Russia. This is

how it works: when people have

low wages, when there’s a hole in the

ground, when they have no medical

insurance,

when they live, I don’t know, worse than in

some African countries, and at the same time

some people, in a very ostentatious way,

make money from this and buy themselves

yachts — that is monstrous

injustice. I know many people will now

say, “Navalny is going after

the oligarchs again, he’s such a socialist.” I’m not

a socialist at all. I’m talking about a normal,

reasonable principle: a country cannot be

organized this way. These fertilizers

produced there in Perm Krai

should work for everyone. They should make all of us

a little richer, and

they should make especially a little richer those who

live in Perm Krai, in Berezniki, because

they live there while it damages

the environment and harms their health.

That is normal, and it works that way in every

country except Russia. Here Putin has

not only built a paradise for himself and

his acquaintances, former colleagues,

and dacha neighbors, but also for people like

Rybolovlev, who quite demonstratively

behave this way. I mean, listen,

suppose there’s a crisis in the country, a hole in the

ground, all sorts of problems, and for the fourth

year in a row real household incomes are falling — well,

then don’t buy this yacht right now,

so ostentatiously. I don’t know, do

something else. Why do you need a yacht

right now? No — I’ll buy it, and nothing will happen to me, and

what tax authorities? No one will come to me

with a search warrant, no one will demand that I

pay additional taxes.

No one will investigate how I came to have such an amount

of cash, where it came from, or how I got it.

I withdrew it

and I paid taxes on it too

That is, I pay export

duties on this fertilizer, and so on and so forth.

Nobody looks into any of this; nobody cares about anything.

The regime, the authorities, are only concerned with one thing:

preventing our rallies and

stopping our strikes in order

to protect themselves and guys like

Rybolovlev, who pay bribes.

So if we do not want to see in

our country disasters and a yacht that

was paid for at the cost of that disaster abroad,

then on the 28th, let’s come out and

in Berezniki, let me remind you, there will be

a rally, an action like that. There’s a video clip

that... please, let me answer the question about it.

Listen, I’m sorry, I somehow

got carried away and forgot that with the hashtag

#Navalny2018 on Twitter, you can ask questions.

What do you think about the self-immolation in

the city of Ishimbay? Well, it is monstrous.

I deliberately did not bring it up, I did not want to

show the video. Well, Sergei Smirnov

spoke about it in detail on our channel’s broadcast

and said the same thing:

hopelessness, the inability to achieve

any result.

Anyone who has been to a Russian, Soviet-style court

has seen it many times. Even if you are a hundred

times in the right, and you are suing not even Putin

or Medvedev, not the city mayor, but, say,

a management company, you will still never

win in court.

If it’s some deputy mayor of your city

who is obviously carrying out illegal

actions, you will never win.

It is impossible to get justice in

a Russian court; it is impossible to get

justice from

officials. The only thing that exists is

this thing called Putin’s Direct Line (the annual televised call-in show). You have to

get through on the phone or somehow pass along a

folder of documents, and then, if

your lucky star happens to be shining somewhere

in the heavens,

Putin will say on the Direct Line: why is it that in

the city of Ishimbay something has happened?

Please fix the situation,

and the governor will go and fix it.

Otherwise, nothing will happen.

But a person set himself on fire here—this is

a monstrous, horrific situation. What more

can be said? Jeffrey666 keeps

asking, I see. The person asks whether there is

an important proposal regarding the strike:

filing complaints and petitions is pointless,

but appeals to the administrative system in order to

overload it

are one of the forms, one of the forms, one of the forms of

peaceful protest. Our strike

consists—sorry, is made up

of three elements: we do not go to

the elections, we campaign against participating in them, but we monitor

the elections, and of course within the framework of

that monitoring, we

will build an unprecedented system

for election monitoring, and of course we will

generate a huge number of complaints,

and not empty ones, not just for the sake of

complaining—they will be very well-founded, because

violations are happening constantly. I mean,

good Lord, just turn on the television and look:

it is completely blatant, open campaigning

for Putin every second, every second.

For 50 minutes of the news they talk only

about him. So of course we will deal with all of this.

Alexei Anatolyevich, Andrei

Shivomdo asks me:

would you like to have a yacht yourself? Well, I’m not sure

I’m not sure I would want a yacht, because

—

well, first of all, you have to know how to

operate it somehow; second, it is terribly expensive

to maintain. It’s one of those things—

like in India in the past, when they gave someone a white

elephant: if they gave you a white elephant,

it would ruin you. So no, I definitely do not need a yacht.

It’s simply unclear

what to do with it, and my wife gets seasick,

so I’m not sure that a vacation on

a yacht would be especially comfortable for us.

Though of course it would be interesting

to sail once, at least. By the way, once we

calculated that if you split the cost

of some small yacht with a skipper,

it can even be cheaper than a hotel. Though of course

it probably would not be the kind of yacht

that Rybolovlev has. Based on your research

or your impressions, asks Ivan Ivanov, what

percentage of the security services supports you?

There have been no studies on that, and they

are impossible to conduct, because

they may support us, but

they would not allow any polling on that issue.

So let me go by my own

somewhat subjective impressions.

I do interact with security officers who

detain me, drag me away, and in the building where

I live, half the building is occupied by the National Guard (Rosgvardiya),

it’s basically half a departmental building,

so it is very convenient for them to detain me:

they just have to leave their apartments,

walk to my entrance, and catch me there.

Based on personal interaction, I see that

more than half support me,

with reservations like, “You’re doing a good job,

but nothing can be achieved.”

But of course, the work of fighting

corruption

is supported by everyone. And these people from inside

the law enforcement system,

support it even more, because they see everything from below

perfectly well, and they know all about their own bosses,

and about protection rackets and kickbacks—they know it all.

So: have I seen the music video about myself

performed by the rapper Morgenstern? I have,

and I even posted it everywhere. It’s a good video, thanks.

And again, about the man from Bashkortostan (a republic in Russia) who

set himself on fire—a victim of a rotten system, Diana writes.

Diana is absolutely right. I was in

Berezniki, Oleg Kozlov writes, and there

the scale is much bigger than in your

picture. That’s true—the picture is quite

old, and the sinkhole keeps expanding

several times over. Those houses, dachas, or whatever

they have there—some vegetable plots—they keep

having to move them. I read about it in the newspapers.

The scale there really is

quite large.

Neil asks: “Alexei, why don’t you want

to do a collaboration with Grudinin?”

Collaborations happen between YouTube

channels. Presidential candidates are supposed to

run

an election campaign, and candidate

Grudinin, like all the other candidates,

doesn’t need a collaboration with me.

What they need is to fight

for their own voters. When I was running

an active campaign

up until I was denied registration,

remember: I would start these broadcasts by saying

that over the weekend I had been in three

different cities, that my rallies had taken place there,

and at the end of the program I would say, now I’m

flying out and I’ll be in three more cities,

guys, come out. In every city

quite a lot of people came to see me. In every

city we promoted the fact that I

was coming, and then promoted the fact that I

had come and gone. In other words,

an election campaign doesn’t need any

collaboration with Navalny. If this is

a normal candidate, then go out and

campaign. Have you seen anyone

holding rallies like that—big or small,

any kind at all—where there’s an announcement in some city:

“Dear residents of Berezniki,

there will be an appearance in the main square by

candidate X,” any candidate at all? No, there are no such announcements.

Because the candidates don’t go out, they don’t

speak, and it’s impossible to run

an election campaign if you don’t

do that. So what kind of collaboration could

possibly help? I could right now, on air, and for the

rest of the campaign, directly

urge people to vote for any candidate whatsoever, but

compared with the results

you just saw on the slide, there simply

would be no change at all.

People think rationally. They’d say, I guess

he’s telling us to vote for so-and-so,

and maybe some people would listen to me

and vote, but

it’s not as important, not as powerful as

people tend to think. More likely, people

would say: all right, let’s take a look at

who this person is, try to understand what

he does, won’t be able to find any

information, and will think: well, listen, if

Tsvetov himself doesn’t want to get our

votes—this hypothetical Tsvetov—then what’s the point

of us even getting up and going anywhere?

So, guys, don’t be more active

than the candidates themselves. Don’t be holier

than the Pope.

It’s impossible. What you’re proposing—this

collaboration—Grudinin isn’t proposing it, and I’m

not asking him to do it. We called for

a voters’ strike. And now these

people on social media—it’s not especially

interesting—say, look, we’re now going to write

128 reasons why people should go to

the election. The question is: why aren’t the candidates

themselves writing these reasons? How did it happen that you’re

running around Facebook writing comments and

urging each other that you need

to go vote, while your candidates aren’t doing that?

Where are their videos? Why aren’t they

fighting it out in the comments?

Why aren’t they coming

to big meetings?

Why aren’t they making the case? Because they don’t want to.

Because they have no desire to. Because

those are the conditions the Kremlin has set, and because

they know their role. That role

is to get one percent

so that later they can point at us and say,

“See, the opposition went to the election

and got one percent. Everything is fair.” And

what about the turnout forecast?

We’re not going to give a turnout forecast. It

doesn’t make sense, because there is a well-known

sociological rule, a phenomenon,

that people always overstate turnout. When

you ask someone who isn’t very

interested in politics, someone who doesn’t

go to vote, “Will you go

to the election?” he says, “Yes, I will,” because

that’s the socially approved answer. It’s considered

good to go vote, so

people all say, “I’ll go, I’ll take part.”

Or about the previous election they say, “Yes,

I went and voted,” even though they didn’t.

People always lie in this kind of

poll.

It’s pointless

for us to make a turnout forecast. What we need

is to fight to make that turnout lower. So,

the video I mentioned on

Facebook—I saw it on Sergei Parkhomenko’s page—

it seemed important to me to show it to you now

because this week there was

quite a lot of news from the North

Caucasus, and the news was very unpleasant,

really extremely unpleasant. First we were

told there had been a fire in the office of

Memorial (a Russian human rights organization) somewhere in Ingushetia, then

we saw video of some people simply

methodically setting that office on fire by pouring

gasoline. The head of Memorial in Chechnya was

arrested for drug possession, and few

people have any doubt that those drugs were

planted on him. And this video—

it isn’t very new, it’s from 2013, but it

This is very important for everyone who... nude.

People are discussing it, and I find myself asking this question too:

how can this be happening there—attacks,

arson—an obvious case of arson in Dubna,

it was caught on camera, the video is online,

they burned it down.

Some people burned an office, and the police do nothing,

there are attacks on people, and

the police do nothing, and well, it's clear

why they do nothing: because somehow

the authorities organized it all. But they should at least

do some kind of formal things,

at least something for appearances' sake. But when someone attacks me,

there is no investigation at all, but

they keep writing to me, they want paperwork, and the prosecutor's office

wants police paperwork from me, and the police

again issue some kind of refusal notices. What exactly

are they pretending to do? They understand

that nobody is going to do anything. But they're the ones

in uniform—they're majors, captains,

lieutenants—and they can't completely

ignore this. Here's the video—it's not that

long, two and a half minutes. Let's

watch it so that we can

really understand how all this works. Because

in this video it's not just some

civilian—it's a general.

Let me check—yes, a general, a general,

a police major general, and

a deputy interior minister for the Chechen Republic.

Two and a half minutes—let's watch.

[music]

[music]

[music]

killer... with assistance... ordinary...

[music]

I...

the maximum possible... some miracle... by hand...

...to drag Bill in... I watched this

video three times, and I keep coming back to one thought. Yes, we've

seen a lot of things in many places, but we understand

that this is Chechnya. We've seen all those stadiums filled with

all sorts of people, all that foul language—good grief.

But here a major general isn't even embarrassed by the camera.

He says right there, "I'm not afraid to say this on camera."

There are people sitting there—not children,

not some random subordinates of his,

but grown men, older guys, men in their sixties,

in ties and suits. They remember the Soviet Union,

these people do—they already held positions back in the USSR

as district heads or something like that, who knows.

And he sits there, not at all embarrassed by the camera, and

says: do whatever you want, kill whoever

you want. What is this? How can this

be happening? And of course, what can one expect

when it comes to investigating

crimes against human rights activists,

or anything else, if a police major general

isn't afraid, on camera,

to say things like that? This is

simply beyond the pale.

All right, so you're that kind of person,

you decided to strike this heroic, macho

pose in the smoking room, to somehow

show off after an important meeting—people say things like that.

But I know, of course, if you sat him down here now,

he would say: "Alexei,

you're not a good man. You sit there

in Moscow, you understand nothing at all,

hosting your program, without knowing that we're dealing

with Wahhabis. Everyone has their own truth.

Yes, his truth is this: we're dealing with

Wahhabis, we have to cut them down, destroy them,

and if there are no other ways to deal with them,

we plant drugs on them too.

We find out he's a Wahhabi—by day he works

on a collective farm, and at night he'll start shooting at me

from somewhere, so we plant drugs on him,

take him away, strangle him, shoot him,

or whatever else is happening in Chechnya.

We'll dress him in some kind of uniform, put

a bullet in his pocket, and shoot him,

and then say it was a special operation. Okay.

The one good thing is that this video is from

2013. So the question is: what did you achieve

with methods like these?

Did this thing work? With all these

Wahhabis—real or imagined—or

people simply declared to be Wahhabis,

or just so someone's business could be seized,

they were taken out and shot. They did this in

Dagestan, they did it in Ingushetia, they did it in

Chechnya too. So how wonderfully

did that work out for you? That was

2013, and now the head of the FSB (Russia's security service)

says that three or four thousand

people from the North Caucasus, mainly

from Dagestan and Ingushetia, went off to fight for

ISIS. So where did they come from, if you

were killing whoever you wanted like that? Well, they

came from exactly there. You can fight terrorism harshly

only if, on the other side, you also fight harshly

against

injustice. Because why does a person

grow a beard and go off into the

forest? Yes, he has religious beliefs,

but all of that is layered on top of some

injustice: something was taken from him,

someone was killed unlawfully,

he knows his brother was shot, and the body

hasn't been returned; his mother goes around trying and failing

to get answers. We hear about this all the time.

Recently, I think—just this week—in

Chechnya there was some case: a woman

was trying to get someone to tell her

what had happened to her husband, who had been arrested and

taken away—and now she has disappeared. But they all have

relatives. And besides, it's that kind of

society in the North Caucasus—everyone

knows everything, everyone knows what's going on.

He watched and watched, and then of course

he grew a beard and went off into the forest. And it is precisely

this lawlessness, this

cruelty, that is the main reason.

And because I often end up

in detention centers, I spend a lot of time

with Chechens, with

Dagestanis who end up there...

Everything is laid out there in great detail.

It is all described, and everyone in those circles knows it.

How this works in practice, and

this kind of lawlessness

— so blatant and deliberate — leads

to nothing except an increase in the number of

these so-called extremists, Wahhabis, whatever

you want to call them. This tactic does not work.

You can arrest them, I don’t know, cut off

their fingers, torture them, abuse them, throw them into prison en masse —

it does not work. They were locked up in those

prisons, they came back from those prisons — it does not

work. This senseless cruelty does not work.

In order to prevent the emergence of

this kind of religious extremism in

the North Caucasus, social problems

in the North Caucasus need to be addressed. It is necessary that

salaries in Makhachkala not be 13,000 rubles a month (about $140), or

15,000. People need to be able to earn

a decent living by means other than banditry.

But in Chechnya it is the same: enormous amounts of money are

being poured in, while people

are living, literally, hand to mouth,

scraping by somehow. There is no money, and naturally

people understand all too well what is going on around them.

There is injustice, there is no money, and earning a living

is impossible.

And if you so much as look at someone the wrong way, you will

be branded a terrorist, some kind of Wahhabi.

So then the logic becomes: I might as well become a Wahhabi myself

and go do it. That is the logic.

This logic works the same way everywhere in similar countries

and similar regions.

And what is happening now in the North

Caucasus with the arrest of these people from Memorial (the Russian human rights organization)

— what were they doing? They were protecting

ordinary people from arbitrariness. And now

they have been declared drug addicts, locked up, and

given long prison sentences. They are driving

Memorial out of

Ingushetia. Will that make things better for anyone?

No, it will not. There will simply be more real

extremists. Someone will blow something up for you,

God forbid, much sooner — precisely because

you drove the human rights defenders out of there.

That is why what is happening

is monstrous. And what is additionally monstrous is

that the federal authorities are acting as if

nothing is happening, as if they have not

noticed any of it. There is footage, by the way,

of how Memorial’s office in Ingushetia supposedly

caught fire all by itself. Let’s take a look.

Mom.

[music]

[music]

Does this look anything like the news report that

appeared in Russian state

agencies: “A fire occurred at Memorial’s office”?

A fire.

No, it looks like Memorial’s office

was set on fire by some people, with the full

encouragement of the local police. There had already

been attacks before that, constant

incidents. They either burned it down themselves,

either the police or some center there —

I do not know who handles this — or they

hired people. And nobody does anything.

Novaya Gazeta (an independent Russian newspaper) is sounding the alarm, publishing

these videos, and nobody cares at all. Some kind of

police department there, a unit for the

Southern Federal District,

and all these main directorates, and all the rest of the

top brass, are doing absolutely nothing. Well,

they should at least think that this will create more

work for them, because this kind of

lawlessness committed by state

agencies will lead to double the lawlessness

in the shadows, where there are

actual, real

extremists and terrorists, for whom in

such an atmosphere it is advantageous, very advantageous,

to recruit people. So, the State Duma committee

recommended adopting in the second

reading the draft law on volunteering. What do you think?

someone asks me. So,

this kind of bill is not needed at all.

Why do volunteers need a bill? Here you are,

a volunteer in an election campaign — do you

need a bill? You are a volunteer, you come

to a shelter for homeless animals and

help out — do you need a bill for that? This is

some kind of idiocy. They are constantly

trying to pass bills everywhere and

introduce some kind of regulation.

Why? Thank God, over the last

few years in Russia

the volunteer movement has been developing. People

go places, do things,

help out — excellent, thank you very much.

We should encourage you, let’s all praise

volunteers. But no — instead, they want to pass a law and

somehow regulate the work of volunteers.

Because heaven forbid someone on their own

goes to an orphanage and starts

helping someone without legal grounds. What a

horror. It is utter idiocy.

Usually people write 65/34, “remove Belarus,”

“remove the slogan ‘Kill whoever you want,’”

saying it is incitement. We are the mass

media, and frankly we do not care.

Someone posted a video for me about

strikes and Sviyazhsk last

time. The leaflets were torn down in one day, but we are not

giving up. Do not worry about the lifespan of a leaflet.

A leaflet’s lifespan is three hours. If yours hung

for a whole day, that is actually excellent.

You put up a leaflet so that within three

hours ten people see it — that is it, it has

done its job. There is no need

to get upset: “Oh my God, I put up

leaflets, and a week later not one was left.”

They are not supposed to be. But it is a very

effective method of campaigning, and we

have studied this many times. When

someone posts a notice in an apartment building entrance, something

you know, styled like

a notice from the building superintendent, everyone

reads it, and we put up notices from the election commission, and everyone reads them.

They understand that this isn't a real election cycle, well...

Everyone always understands what we mean.

As for Navalny, when Putin is...

once again 're-elected'—there's no point asking, Nico.

Nico, you can already consider Putin elected once again.

Once again—haven't they already shown you everything?

Putin has been 'elected' with 78 percent; on March 18,

there will simply be a kind of formal,

ceremonial event. That's what

will happen: there will be a solemn

ceremony at which the figures that I would

already tell you in advance will be read out by Pamfilova (Ella Pamfilova, head of Russia's Central Election Commission),

she'll read them off a piece of paper and say:

"Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin,

78 percent. Congratulations to you. Here

is your certificate; we shake your hand."

As for Navalny's headquarters: no, these are our

headquarters. You financed them; we

created them together all across the country as an

instrument of influence, an instrument of struggle

for our rights.

Probably after March 18,

it will be difficult—practically impossible—

to maintain the entire structure, because it is very

expensive to keep 84 headquarters running. But we will do

everything possible, and we will ask you

to help us

so that we can preserve the core of this

structure for any purpose: participation in

elections, if we're allowed to take part, if there are

real elections;

also campaigning, the same mass

actions, carrying out regional

anti-corruption investigations, and so on.

All kinds of political activity,

all forms of fighting for your rights, require

organized structures: there has to be an office,

equipment, channels for distributing information, and so

on.

We created this, and we will try to preserve it

for all of us.

There was an interesting little revolution in propaganda that, for

me, was quite curious. You may

know that tragic events took place in Perm (a city in Russia).

They were tragic events.

Two teenagers attacked a school there, and

they attacked fourth-grade students. Fortunately,

no one was killed, although there are seriously

injured people there; as I understand it, a teacher

is still in serious condition. But if

we abstract away from these

quite tragic events, then of course their

media coverage says a great deal about

Russian propaganda. Because one of the

attackers—

he deleted all his posts on VKontakte (a Russian social network),

but those who started digging around and looking at

what kind of person he was saw that he

had once left a comment in one of

our groups, writing something along the lines of

"Russia is a country of slaves."

He wrote it in a Navalny group, and

this was found by the RT television channel, with our

wonderful Margarita Simonyan at its helm, receiving

huge amounts of state budget money, and

they turned it into a news story. And it's interesting to watch

how a story launched by RT

then gets transformed further. That's why

many journalists wrote the same thing—well, in order

to make it sound as though the person

had expressed support: "The attacker expressed

support for Navalny on social media." Then all of this

migrated into outlets like Znak.com (an independent Russian media outlet),

which used to be fairly decent

but has become not so decent anymore. In

particular, they wrote that this

person supported Navalny—

the attacker. Then the same thing appeared

on Rambler, where it had already been

reworked a little differently. It was something like:

"The schoolboy who carried out the stabbing in

Perm supported Navalny and called

the country a nation of slaves." Well, of course—that belongs to Mamut (Alexander Mamut, a Russian oligarch).

The same thing was in Gazeta.ru and

in

for some reason in Life as well. Gazeta.ru also belongs

to Mamut, but the really

fantastic part was that this had already

transformed by the time we got to the wonderful TV channel

Tsargrad. I don't even

know who owns it. There it

sounded like: "The massacre in Perm was inspired

by American killers and

Navalny." It's absolutely astonishing. It

really shows how this

machine works: it can take some

comment on social media and turn it into the claim that I

and some Americans

inspired the massacre in Perm. And I thought,

well, in principle it's actually quite an elegant

trick. It has potential, and you can

even imagine what kinds of headlines

there would be if these same media

didn't love the people they currently

love. For example, Margarita Simonyan.

She shocked the general public when

she announced that she had

boiled herself a beaver's head for lunch.

That really happened, yes. Everyone was very

surprised by her culinary

preference—a beaver's head. And basically,

if we follow that same logic,

a headline immediately popped into my head.

If we mention what other culinary

preferences famous

cinematic characters had, then I

came up with this headline: "Margarita Simonyan's culinary colleague:

'I ate his liver with

fava beans and washed it down with a nice Chianti.'" That's the same logic.

The same goes for Dmitry Peskov.

If the media didn't like him

and wanted to say something about

him, they could easily 'discover' a connection. Experts

have established a link between Peskov and the serial killer Chikatilo (Andrei Chikatilo, a notorious Soviet serial murderer):

the connection is established.

They both watched the program Vremya (the main Soviet/Russian TV news program). Pure

truth, pure truth: they both watch

Vremya, and of course that means there is a connection between them.

There is a connection, but in this particular way.

You can speculate a lot, really a lot.

You can come up with a lot of funny things, invent things just for

a laugh, but all these outlets—and the smaller ones too—do it for

laughs, yet in fact they really do make all of this up.

They really do invent all of this, and in fact they

spread it all around and show it to a large

number of people. That part is

a bit sad. Inferno Overkill asks:

What’s the situation with the quadcopter? As I understand it,

the bureau is still in the process. Right, so we

raised the money for the quadcopter, and even their

manufacturer or dealer said that

they would give you an additional discount, and we

and we, we, we will buy this quadcopter. I also

wanted to say, as we wrap up

the program—we have 3 minutes left—I wanted

to tell you that we found out a few things about you.

We conducted a special survey for

those who watch our channel, Navalny LIVE.

Those who subscribe to the updates—thank you so much

to everyone who took part in it,

in this survey, who filled out this

poll—and I wanted to tell you about it

a little, so that you understand what

we’re planning to do together, generally speaking, and

together with our channel. Why did we start

doing this survey? We were very worried, and

I was very worried because of these

data we’re collecting—yes, these

it’s all fun, of course, but somehow it also feels like

you’re begging for money on air, and that really is

a pretty awkward feeling—there’s probably a better word for it.

We were worried that people might start

getting fed up, unsubscribing, or something like that, because

we suddenly switched to fundraising all the time. In short,

the main question, the question we

wanted to ask, was: how do you feel about the fact

that we turned on donations? And to our

surprise, it turned out that you were all

very supportive of donations and really back us.

Show us the slide with that question—what

does the audience tell us there? Yes, you can see

that most people are quite tolerant of it.

That’s about advertising—about sponsored content, so to speak.

Most of the audience is quite tolerant

of it, basically. So that’s why we do it,

and we’ll keep doing it. By the way, there aren’t any today,

incidentally, because the system broke, as usual.

That system through which we

do it—we’re planning to connect

another one. There were a lot of questions about it; it’s called

Super Chat, yes, where you can

send a comment there. That’s already a

YouTube feature where all of this is done.

Our next question was about advertising,

because we’re planning to run ads, and

we were also worried that you would react

very negatively to that. But it turned out that

you feel a little worse about advertising, but

many people—the majority—support it.

Most are willing to put up with it. There are 17

percent who say, absolutely

not under any circumstances.

But nevertheless,

it is possible. Actually, by the way,

on my program right now I’m raising

roughly

1 million rubles a month through your donations

per month, and that shows that the TV channel

Navalny LIVE is one of the

few self-sustaining TV channels in Russia

that

well, that raises about as much money

as it costs to operate each month.

And of course, you donate to us, and we always

remember that.

But even so, the channel can only expand

with additional expenses, and those expenses

we intend to offset through

advertising. And we can see that, overall,

you’re prepared to tolerate that. Thank you very much.

One of the problems we discovered

is that the survey showed that

you don’t share links.

That’s a problem for us. Over the course of a week,

most of those surveyed said that

it just doesn’t occur to them, or they don’t feel like it.

You don’t share links to our broadcasts, and that’s

very important for us, so please

don’t forget to do a bit of

promotion for us, because we do this so that

a larger number of people can learn about us.

Don’t forget to do that.

And the last thing, which was a big

revelation for me:

we wanted to understand what kind of

programs you want. And my hypothesis was

that you wanted things about music,

movies—BadComedian is very popular, after all—yes,

one of the most popular

YouTube bloggers.

Food, current affairs, movies, music, celebrity life,

something like that—art, culture, a program

about women. Remember, I was even advocating

for it, saying that we were planning

to launch some kind of feminist program,

about women, focused on women, where

only women would appear. But

it turned out—let’s take a look at what

you told us you want to see here.

Well, who would have thought it—you’re all

obsessed with politics. What you really want is

nothing but politics. Everyone wants from us

political debates, everyone wants interviews,

everyone wants some kind of political programming.

We thought, we assumed, that we had already

worn you out with all these talking heads

endlessly talking about politics, a little

debate,

two talking heads sitting here and

saying something about politics. But it turned out

that that is exactly what you want. And now let’s

look at what you definitely do not want.

As it happens, none of you wants music,

or dancing, or celebrity life, or programs

about women. Somehow, none of that really

interests you. But maybe you just aren’t

that matters to us, because otherwise this kind of thing

wouldn't exist—you can't imagine how important that is, so

even if you can't vote for it, for us

it was quite revealing. We

will try, all the same, to develop in

the direction you pointed us toward,

because this is our shared

guerrilla TV channel. We made it

to get the message across

to people, and also, well, a little bit

to have fun and entertain you. And we

understand perfectly well that without your support,

including financial support, no amount of

advertising will keep us afloat, simply put. And, well,

most importantly, if we don't

feel that you and we are one TV channel,

in the literal sense of the word—that you are just as much

its owners as we are—then it will simply stop

being interesting for us to make. And that is very

important. So once again, thank you very much

to everyone who took part in the poll. We

will try to develop in line with

the directions you indicated to us. On January 28,

you need to come and vote.

Wait, I got carried away. Alexei, you don't need to go anywhere,

you don't need to vote, nothing like that

needs to be done. What you need to do on the 28th is go to

the rallies that will take place in your cities.

The link is in the description. Watch our

programs—we have transcripts. In the

description it's indicated. You asked for transcripts for a very long time,

and now we have them. Download

our app. Spread this

information. We'll see you on January 28,

but before January 28, next Thursday we

will meet again on this same broadcast. Thank you

very much. Be happy.

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