Putin’s stalling, killings in the Caucasus, and the trade unions’ victory

[music]

Good evening, everyone. It's 8:00 p.m. in Moscow.

It's late, which means we're live on air.

This is the program *Russia of the Future*, and I'm Alexei

Navalny — or “Defeat Dysentery” and

“blackmailer,” as a huge number of media outlets now call me

in a huge number of media outlets belonging to

— well, to Prigozhin. He, Prigozhin, has

an enormous number of them, really.

Media outlets — I saw that for myself this week. We'll talk about that.

Please send me your questions

on Twitter with the hashtag #RussiaOfTheFuture.

I'll do my best to answer them.

The first thing I want to say, without

any delay, without any winding up, is to remind you

that this weekend is the Nemtsov March (a memorial march for murdered opposition leader Boris Nemtsov).

Come — I'll definitely be there. On February 24,

I'll be there. I go every year,

and I will keep going. It's a very important

event, and I hope we'll see each other

there — as many of you as possible,

especially those viewers who live in Moscow. Gathering starts at 1:00 p.m.

at Strastnoy Boulevard. City Hall spent a long time

trying to ban this event,

or move it, postpone it — but

they failed, and it's very important to come.

Putin's address, of course, is

an important event. Every year we

watch it, and every year everyone says,

“Good Lord, it's impossible to watch, let's not

watch it.” But we still do,

because, after all, it's one of the two or three

times a year when he appears live,

whether on the call-in show answering Russians' questions

and inevitably helps some

little girl, or gives someone a puppy,

or fixes the plumbing in some

little village.

And every year we wait for the president's address

to the Federal Assembly,

because it is, after all, an important

political statement about what we've

achieved, where we're headed, and it's very

interesting to watch the hall as well, because

because

you can see what the country is like. It's not just

deputies and members of that very

Federal Assembly, made up of

the State Duma and the Federation Council — there are also

all sorts of people there, government members, assorted figures.

This is the so-called elite of Russia. This time I even saw

there,

Iosif Prigozhin there. Seriously, we've reached the point where

not just Putin's cook (a jab at Yevgeny Prigozhin), but the husband of singer

Valeriya — for heaven's sake. And Elena

Malysheva was there too, the very woman who on her TV show

in the studio

has people acting out various organs

— a penis, something else — bouncing around the studio.

This is all the elite of Russia. That alone was

very interesting: watching Putin

gather in one hall a truly

motley rabble — I won't hesitate to use that word —

the worst people, outright crooks and thieves, every other one of them.

When they show the front row, I think:

my God, we've made investigations about almost

all of them.

We've published investigations. There sits, for example,

Klishas with his watches, and over there sits

Lebedev, Zhirinovsky's son and deputy speaker of the

State Duma.

We did that investigation too. And there

Putin was once again talking about

the need for the rule of law, while this guy sits there

nodding — and he owns four hotels in Spain.

Where did he get them from? Right, right — patriotism, yes, yes, we

won't let our Western partners

tell us what to do, Putin says, and Lebedev is sitting there

nodding his head. It's very interesting to watch.

But essentially,

this time it was so empty

that the only significant thing

that

the only notable fact that caught everyone's

attention was that Putin once again talked

about “winding up” — about not wasting time getting started.

Which has become incredibly funny by now. It's like

some kind of parody: the man has been speaking for twenty years,

and for almost twenty years — certainly since 2007 —

at the very least, definitely since 2007,

in every address he says: we

have no time to waste getting started, guys, come on.

“Guys” — he's addressing these fat-faced

thugs, these shameless

thieves sitting right in front of him.

“No time to waste getting started.” And they don't say,

“Vladimir Vladimirovich, you're right, no time to waste,

let's not delay, let's get to work

right now.” Instead they disperse and

do absolutely nothing, then gather again a year later,

and he says, “Guys, no time to waste getting started.”

For about 20 years now. Let's watch a short

37-second clip to see how Putin

has changed: his face changes, his age

changes, everything changes — except him saying

“there's no time to waste getting started.” Thirty-seven seconds of “winding up.”

We just need to get moving and start working.

Let's do it right away, without delay, as quickly

as possible, without so-called “winding up.”

There is no time to waste getting started, no time

to waste getting started, we have no time for delay.

We don't, we don't have time to waste getting started.

As I've already said, we have no reserve of time for delay,

for any further dithering and foot-dragging — there simply

isn't any.

We have no time to waste getting started. And you want to say:

who exactly are you talking to, Vladimir

Vladimirovich? You've been in power for 20

years, after all. And in fact, it's not just

these specific phrases about delay —

you can trace how they pass from one

address to the next. After all, it's always the same thing:

protecting business.

Every time he literally says, “Stop

harassing business,” and we already know he'll say again

that it's time to stop harassing

business. And he says it, while these

American investment bankers are being arrested.

and not only Americans who were simply

jailed over what was obviously a business dispute

thrown into pretrial detention for no real reason

You can listen to the radio and hear them saying that

business should not be terrorized, that they need to stop

putting entrepreneurs in jail under

business-related criminal charges. There it is, on

this radio point—I know, the radio is on there.

It is always playing there. I do not listen to it, and that

is where the great irony lies, and all the

rest of it: administrative barriers,

protecting business, fighting poverty.

Good Lord, every time he says that we must

fight poverty, but over

the past few years poverty has been rising; we can see that it

is rising. Yes, in fact, since

Putin came to power, after the 1990s,

after oil prices went up,

we saw a certain decline in the level of

poverty. But for the last seven years—not one year, not

two—it has been growing all the same; poverty

is increasing. And more than that, here he is

talking about how in 2019 we had

different figures constantly being

quoted.

... million people below the poverty line,

below the poverty line. Excuse me, but all of that

comes from the official figure. The official

figure, let me remind you, on which

Putin’s statistics are based, is that

the average salary in Russia is 41,000 rubles

a month. Those of you out of ten who

live in the regions (outside Moscow and St. Petersburg) will simply start

laughing, clutching your sides, and

collapsing onto the couch like this, because

everyone knows that is a lie. If we

look at the real statistics, then

half the population would be below the

poverty line. This time Putin tried

to do this:

hand out some financial promises,

financial aid—large families, we will give

this; mortgage holders, we will give that.

And it did not sound very convincing—rather,

not convincing at all.

Because, well, usually he at least makes promises

on a grander scale, and these promises

were tiny, handed out piecemeal:

he said, we will allocate 7 here, 36 there for children,

billion rubles there, and so many billions of rubles

for someone else. But overall, by

the calculations of the finance minister,

Anton Siluanov calculated it and said that all of

Putin’s promises would cost 130 billion rubles

in total.

Is that a lot or a little? Well, last year

they raised the retirement age, and that

as they said would bring 1 trillion rubles

to the budget by cutting budget spending. That is,

they took 1 trillion from the population. The increase in

VAT

means 630 billion rubles per

year that all of us will pay additionally.

A trillion—rather—and 130 billion

here, and other taxes are rising, utility charges are

rising. In other words, they pulled

several trillion out of the population in a year, and in return

they say: guys, we will raise child

benefits by 130 billion—130

billion rubles. That is to say,

you understand, they took 2,000 rubles out of your pocket,

and then they say, all right,

Kolya or Masha, you are decent people,

here, have 17 kopecks back

be proud, rejoice, here are your 17 kopecks, and

buy something for the children with them. That is exactly

what it looks like.

And it seems Putin was unable

to fool anyone.

I can confess this whole guilty

pleasure: I follow Vladimir Solovyov on Instagram

and on Vladimir Solovyov’s Instagram

I sometimes read the

comments.

That is not very important either, but the people who

follow Vladimir Solovyov are, well,

presumably, I mean, his subscribers are

people who are fans of his program,

people who like watching television. And so,

just out of curiosity, go there—you can even

keep listening to me right now and go look at

the comments on Solovyov’s Instagram

under his post about how

great Putin is, what a great

amazing address it was.

You really get the impression there that, well, I do not

know, the opposition’s Coordination Council is there

running wild in the comments. Even the most

hardcore opposition figures would never

lay into the authorities and Vladimir

Solovyov the way ordinary people do

in his Instagram comments. And in that sense, well,

this obvious Putin lie

is just—well, it is clear that these

people cannot do anything, because

for 20 years they have been promising the same thing. This time Putin again had

that favorite bit of his—he

perked up immediately during the part about super

weapons. Everything is bad here, poverty,

destitution—but we will fix it, improvements

will come as early as this year. But on the other hand, we

have developed such a missile, we have this

thing, it flies and so on. And the point

is that it cannot be verified, fortunately,

fortunately it cannot be tested in practice

after all.

And I hope neither we, nor our children, nor our grandchildren

will ever see how this

superweapon is used. But when we look at

real life involving technology,

we understand that, basically, about this super

weapon Putin is most likely lying too.

Of course, those developments do exist—

from the 1970s and 1980s, from the Soviet

Union—and everything he talks about there,

the Poseidon missile, the super aircraft, all of that

are developments from the 1970s of the USSR.

But let us, simply in order to assess it,

the power of this technological and

military-industrial complex under

Putin, because this is specifically his

achievement over 20 years. Let’s look at what

happened to the Sukhoi Superjet aircraft.

This is a very important issue, really the most important one,

because for the past

15 years they’ve been obsessing over this Superjet every day; tens of

billions of rubles were spent. There was so much

talk: Superjet, super machine,

we can still build it, we can still make

airplanes, we’re the best, we’re the

coolest. Putin puffed himself up because

it was his pet project. He would come out and

say that we had revived

industry, that we had started building the Super

jet, and thank you to Vladimir Vladimirovich

Putin, they told us.

For the past several years, we were told he had made

a great airplane, the Superjet. And this

week came the news that became,

of course, a milestone in the end result of this development, in the end

a milestone in the history of failure.

Russia’s aviation industry, in general,

the last European operator in

Europe, an Irish company, has abandoned the

Sukhoi Superjet. I know very well why,

because I once sat—there was a time,

I’ve talked about it here several times—on the

board of directors of Aeroflot, and

they were constantly reviewing it there;

the Superjet was constantly being discussed because

Aeroflot had been forced to buy this Super

jet. And there they handed out a sheet with

breakdowns and a

chart showing how many Superjets were flying and

how many were just sitting on the apron.

They handed out that sheet, and then

immediately collected it again so that, God forbid,

none of the board members

who

might say something about it would take that

sheet home. There was nothing secret about it,

apparently, nothing classified,

this information couldn’t be secret.

It basically just said that

the plane was awful and Aeroflot

was suffering huge losses on it, because

an airline makes money from airplanes

only if the plane is flying.

If the plane is in the air, then you’re in

clover.

It brings in money. If the plane is sitting on

the apron, it brings you

huge, huge losses. And with the Superjet

it was constant: something was always

breaking down whenever it landed.

Some sensors wouldn’t work, and they had

to send another plane to

bring in equipment, repair it somewhere,

for enormous sums of money, and then

transport it back again. In other words: losses,

losses, losses. Now it’s all over.

As for the story, for now

only a Mexican company remains

as an operator of the Superjet; in Europe there are already

none. The Mexicans have 22 aircraft, and

of course, we forced Aeroflot and everyone

else to use the Superjet. We

spent tens of billions. Unfortunately,

it all failed. Why? Because, once again,

everything was looted in exactly the same way, because

there are no specialists, and they really pay peanuts

here—even highly qualified

specialists are paid peanuts. But management, the people

who were sitting there at the trough,

feeding off the production of this Superjet,

they made so much money that their great-

great-great-grandchildren will have enough to fly on

private jets, not even just in business

class on Boeings or something else. In other words,

that’s the point.

Billions were stolen, and the plane is of no use to us.

We’ve written it all off as losses, and

now, you’ll see, from the budget, from

your own pocket, they’ll keep taking and taking

money to save this Super

jet, to force Aeroflot to

use them, to pay it subsidies so that

they keep operating them. This will go on forever.

That’s the story. Putin’s technologies are

a failure that you are paying for out of your

own pocket. Though, really, why

not? They could have produced a good airplane

if they hadn’t been stealing. I’m getting a lot of questions

about a statement

by Putin,

a statement Putin made

after this address, when he met with

the editors-in-chief of the media and said something

absolutely astonishing about the internet.

Let’s look at his quote. He said

something like this about the internet:

“They’re all sitting there”—meaning the Americans—

“it’s their invention, they listen to everything, see

everything, and read what you say, and they accumulate

information. And if we

wall ourselves off...” This was in response to

the question of why we need our own Russian

autonomous internet. And from the start he was vigorously

saying we need it. He says, well, they’re

listening to everything, accumulating that information, training

on it—then they won’t be able to accumulate

information. And here, once again,

I just want to draw attention to this:

people with this kind of understanding of technology,

of the internet in particular, are governing

our country in the 21st century—in the 21st century, when

information technology is

the engine of advanced development. And yet

some kind of, I don’t know,

old man speaks up—stop any random person on the street and they’d probably

say something more accurate

or more sensible about the internet.

Because, I mean, here I am, yes, I’m

talking to you on YouTube right now,

and maybe a couple of tens of

thousands of people will watch this program.

about 700,000 people

The Americans are listening to everything—my God, you

just think, Americans can watch

what Navalny said on YouTube—what kind of

the internet, after all, is now email

it’s social networks and everything

else. Yes, probably someone there can

monitor traffic—unencrypted

traffic—hackers, governments, and so

on. But if we build some kind of

“burnit” (apparently garbled speech)—who benefits if we

build some kind of “burnit”? Russia will instantly book

tens of billions of dollars

in losses, because here

half of all business will simply collapse, because you

won’t be able to order deliveries from

AliExpress and things like that. It’s just

that this person is actually ready to shut down the entire

internet because it seems to him

that it’s terribly harmful that some kind of traffic

is moving around somewhere, spreading across

the world, and from anywhere—not just from the U.S., but even

from Iran or Greenland—you can

watch what exactly Navalny

said on YouTube. He genuinely considers this

a problem, genuinely believes that we need

to wall ourselves off so that someone won’t

see this information—and to hell with the fact that

we’ll all become poorer because of it

the main thing is that we’ve cut ourselves off. There will be

no development with these people

Just look at him, look at those

faces in the hall, understand their level

of awareness of the problems—it’s clear, alas

The main conclusion from

Putin’s address is a sad one: we’re going to keep getting poorer, unfortunately

year after year. That’s simply

a real fact now. Putin gives a speech

and says that this year things will improve

but the day before that, Rosstat publishes figures

showing that in January alone, real

incomes fell by 1.3 percent. In January

you became that much poorer

and by the end of the year, as they keep saying,

you’ll be that much poorer again

and this is already the fifth year in a row

and then it’ll be the sixth year in a row, because

with these people, well, they simply cannot

do anything in the modern world

Abalakov asked me: “How do you think,”

“did Putin achieve his goal with this

address—raising his approval rating?” I’m sure

he didn’t. One hundred percent, not this time. Again,

just look at the comments on Instagram

under Vladimir Solovyov’s posts—even the core of Putin’s

audience understands that this is a lie

when they’re told that this year

they’ll feel an improvement in their lives. But they go to

the store, they see their paychecks

they understand perfectly well that all of this is complete

and absolute lies. After all, 20 years—

guys, 20 years is a very long time. They

can go on as much as they want

talking about confrontation with

the Americans, Crimea, Ukraine—endlessly

but none of that works anymore. I’m not saying

that all this means that tomorrow

there will be a revolution or Putin will leave

power. Between public disappointment and

the removal of a failed and

corrupt dictator, there can be

quite a large gap. But the fact that he can no longer

raise his approval rating by any

means other than falsification is simply

a clinical fact. There are no more fools

who believe them. Look, again,

80 percent of people in Russia use the internet

yes, you can go anywhere

even to Odnoklassniki (a Russian social network), find

the places where the most backward, uninformed people hang out

look at what they write, just

read it and you’ll understand that there was no

surge in approval and there cannot be one

So, the next topic is naturally our

investigation today, which

came about rather by accident, actually

I talk about this in the video

so I won’t dwell on it for long at all

Someone sent it in and simply said,

“Look at the renovations on this house.”

“It’s ужас—can you find out whose house it is?”

So we looked: it’s a gigantic house

really intriguing, so we started

working on it, and somehow I spent the whole weekend

in complete shock. I’m an adult

and I’ve been dealing with issues of

corruption investigations for a long time—it’s hard

to surprise me, and I understand how

things work in the Caucasus, but honestly I did not

expect that, first of all, if we take

a kind of family tree, yes, of

all the family names

and then a list of the main government bodies

and officials, and line them up, it would simply be

the same thing. More than that, they really are all

murderers there—not figuratively, but literally

actual, genuine mass murderers

brutal killers. Let’s

watch a brief 1-minute-50-second

excerpt from today’s video

and then I’ll talk more about it

We open a map of Cherkessk, the capital

of Karachay-Cherkessia, and this gigantic

thing immediately jumps out at you. But

see for yourselves: this is what the republican capital looks like from satellite view

and this is what this

gigantic palace on the river in the center

of the city looks like. Now, of course, we’re very

interested in how much something like this could cost. We

estimate this property at 1 billion rubles

and the logical question arises: who, in

one of Russia’s poorest regions, where the average

salary is 24,600 rubles, where even the governor

officially earns 74,000 rubles a

month, could afford to spend

1 billion rubles on a house? It’s a gigantic scheme

all centered on a single

but incredibly wealthy family. They live

better than any of you

they drive Bentleys and sports cars and live

in palaces with exotic animals, and their

wives are covered from head to toe

in diamonds

they party and travel around the world

enjoy life, and almost all of them are

officials. And Kaitov was and remains a very

influential man in the republic, but

there is one small detail standing in his way

in 2004, when he was 27 years old, during

a children's birthday party celebration,

he killed seven people at his dacha (country house). What do

you think a person who organized

such a mass

slaughter should get? When should he be released?

This Alik was sentenced to 17 years

in prison, but in the end, in less than

10 years, Kaitov was already free

here is a 2014 photo of him with the well-known

Rauf Arashukov, who may be familiar to you. Rauf

captioned it: "my brother"

Of course, this murder story

absolutely shocked me. You see, it

was a huge story back then. In

Karachay-Cherkessia, there were actual riots

people literally

stormed the government building; they

seized it, because it was shocking, and

the crime was shocking: seven people were killed at

the house during a children's party, then taken to

the mountains, piled tires around them, and the bodies were burned; they could not

be found. I mean, it was, well,

it really was an extraordinary

incident. Kozak flew there by plane

met with these people and promised that there would be a trial

there was a trial

and he got out in less than 10 years. It's

you know, like the Tsapki gang

the very same Tsapki in Krasnodar Krai

in the stanitsa (Cossack village) of Kushchyovskaya — they carried out

the same kind of mass murders, and

and of course, in Krasnodar Krai

the prosecutors worked with them. We, we, we

proved in our film about Chaika

showed that the family of the Prosecutor General

was connected to those Tsapki. There, everyone

was tied into it — that is, judges

obeyed them, the police were with them

yes, it was all exactly like in

Karachay-Cherkessia

but there, at least under pressure from

public opinion, as a result of the public

shock, all the Tsapki, well,

the rest of the Tsapki were imprisoned

and then he was simply strangled in his cell

so that he could not talk and would not

tell anyone how he did business

together with the family of the Prosecutor

General. But here, it is as if Tsapok had been

released after that

and then appointed to run all of

Kuban's energy sector, and he would have built

himself the biggest house in

Krasnodar

Now, we know Krasnodar is lawlessness

but we still do not imagine that something like this is possible

but here, I remember this whole

story very well. I looked at the photos, at how he

I looked at photos of his house, saw these

videos of the children — all of it was very

easy to find. That is, once we understood whose

house it was, then you just google Kaitov and

everything just spills out in front of you. We

only have a 25-minute video, and even so

it turned out that we left out a huge amount

of information. And it just

simply

hits you in the face: he killed, yes, and got out in less than ten

years. I specifically looked up

for example, a week ago, a resident

of Pskov

was given 10 years for trying

to smuggle some amount of drugs

into a penal colony. You cannot bring drugs into

a penal colony — that is certainly a crime, and

such a person certainly should

be imprisoned. But he got more time than

Kaitov served for 7 proven murders. That is,

he was the organizer there; he said

"kill them, take them away, and burn their

bodies, throw them into a mine shaft." And he served less than

ten years, got out, and simply ended up

inside this establishment. And what struck me most about

Karachay-Cherkessia, of course,

is that, well, it is certainly different from

the rest of Russia, even from Chechnya, because in

Chechnya it is, well, criminal, but

still what is commonly called

abuse of power — police-state

lawlessness, if you like — sorry for the expression

but Karachay-Cherkessia, as they say,

and Kabardino-Balkaria too, is more like

outright gangster lawlessness, some kind of

completely different kind

of criminality at its core, but also

an open one. Just look there — all these

the current president of the republic

was sitting there at that last

meeting with Putin too, nodding his head

when they said that legality is very important

the rule of law

and that officials must obey the law

he kept nodding his head, while at the same time

this murderer's subordinates are there, and they

all work together, and at the same time his

official salary — just go into

his declaration and look — his wife has 0, and he has

74,000 rubles a month

he could at least have tried somehow to legalize

the laundered money. He sits there wearing one watch worth 5

million rubles, another watch worth 6 million, and

sits there with Putin — these are watches worth

millions, and nobody cares at all. So

that is why people ask me what will happen

Will the Kremlin react? It will keep

ignoring it, of course. Right now, nothing

will happen to him. You saw it yourselves in

In my film, he and Rotenberg, we...

and all those people, again, Valeria and...

Prigozhin, who are also sitting on...

Putin's message to the country's elite—Putin...

stays in power because of this, in power...

Temrezov stays in power, and so do all the others...

real, actual murders. Well, what, they don't...

know? They do know. Again, in the film...

they showed how Putin personally reprimanded...

he said, 'Mr. ...'s family,' meaning...

I squeeze money out of everyone.

And they keep doing it—they are building a house...

of this size, worth a billion rubles...

On paper, in Rosreestr (Russia's property registry), all sorts of people can see it...

people from the FSB (Russia's security service), prosecutors—everyone...

everyone sees that, according to the documents, it's supposedly 300...

square meters, and some kind of small...

sort of holiday home or sanatorium, but in reality...

there stands a gigantic house, and...

all of it was built through robbery.

Life in that republic—this is also something that...

struck me. Karachay-Cherkessia, our...

small republic with a population of 500,000—how did they...

manage...

to steal so much from those 500,000 people?

But they really have made everyone...

destitute. Look at the latest ranking...

of regional well-being: out of 85...

places, Karachay-Cherkessia is 84th. They have simply...

truly robbed everyone.

Today I took this video and, through my...

VKontakte account, we found the most active...

community in Karachay-Cherkessia. I...

wrote, roughly: 'Dear admin,'

'please post this—I’m interested in residents’ opinions.'

And they posted it, to their credit, they did post it.

Go there and look—you can...

see it all in the comments. People write: 'Yes, it's...

all true. Yes, that's exactly how things work here.'

But interestingly, one of the sharpest...

critical discussions was...

not about whether Leonid lied or...

said something wrong or insulted someone, but about...

the fact that I gave a figure in the video: that...

the official salary in the republic is 24,000 rubles...

and people all wrote...

'Has Navalny lost his mind? What 24,000? Ha ha...

ha—we all make 12,000 to 16,000 here.' Well, that's...

exactly where the billion-ruble house came from, because...

there can be no other proportion.

If, from a small number of people, you need...

to build a house worth a billion rubles, then you...

have to fly on private jets, be covered...

in expensive watches, and buy each of your...

children a BMW so they can drive one from the age of 15...

just like they do...

there—the 17-year-old son of Kaitov, for example. So you...

really have to impoverish everyone.

You have to make sure they all...

earn only 12,000 to 16,000 rubles—that's the only way...

it gives you wealth. I see people writing to me in...

Country of Mountains: 'Please do...

an investigation into Dagestan; things are much...

worse here than in Karachay-Cherkessia.'

I believe it, I really do. And by the way...

I have no doubt that in Dagestan there is the same...

lawlessness. We will try to do something.

And the same thing happened with us rather...

by chance, and I’m very glad they sent me...

this video—it turned into an investigation about...

the Caucasus, because for a long time a huge...

number of people have been writing, like, 'Navalny...

you talk about poverty, you talk about...

destitution—make something about us, because people...

see motorcades of Porsche...

Cayennes among Kadyrov's people—but that's how one family lives there...

just one family.

But everyone else does not live like that. Everyone else...

is living in exactly proportional...

poverty—much poorer than in any...

other Russian region. So, yes, we...

will try. Here, I got a letter...

By the way, in 2019 there will be elections...

to the regional parliaments...

in Kabardino-Balkaria and...

Karachay-Cherkessia. Go on YouTube and...

look at the scale of the fraud.

That is exactly why in Karachay-Cherkessia the ballot stuffing is...

so massive—exactly because...

how else are these people, these Temrezovs, supposed to...

stay in power? I hope that in...

Karachay-Cherkessia, this investigation...

that we released...

will somehow have an effect, that people will come and...

take part in our Smart Voting campaign...

and at least vote against this clan.

Because, well, we have to do at least something.

You see this link, this one...

follow the link and take part in Smart...

Voting. It’s clear that...

you cannot remove this bandit власть through elections alone...

you have to apply pressure here, and...

pressure there too, so that at least they...

understand that people are unhappy. Otherwise they...

will go on as before, they will keep...

building billion-ruble houses and saying...

'I think this is normal.' He killed seven...

people, served nine years, and got out.

Since we've started on this—by the way, on the subject of...

salaries, I specifically went and...

looked at what people are writing to our trade union. Well...

here you go: a healthcare worker writing to the union...

of medical workers...

a medical worker at the Biskaya Central District Hospital...

16,000 rubles.

A medical worker at the Krupskaya Central District...

Hospital: 14,500 rubles.

A teacher in the Urupsky District: 16,000. That is where...

the house came from—that is exactly where the house came from.

They robbed everyone there—the entire Caucasus.

Why do I call it a sultanate?

Someone wrote to me on Instagram today...

and said the right thing: that he is local, and...

they all strongly support any...

statements against these Caucasian sultanates...

because that is exactly what they are. They live like...

sultans, literally...

having enslaved the population.

is terrorizing the population, many people there write.

Isn't it scary to speak out on such a topic? No,

it's not. We will keep speaking out, and

of course, in the Caucasus

we want to support everyone who is willing to speak out against this.

There are such people in Karachay-Cherkessia as well.

There are. We were looking for bloggers there who could become

there are people who live right there, are not afraid, and

write all sorts of things. So, since we have started

talking about the Caucasus, and

I want to say something about third forces, because

—

it's interesting, very interesting, and even such a

striking and instructive thing

happened in Moscow: there was a meeting between

a representative of Ramzan Kadyrov

and a well-known figure here,

a man

with a golden pistol, Adam Delimkhanov, a State Duma deputy,

one of Kadyrov's closest associates. He

met with Polad Bülbüloğlu

the wonderful, remarkable actor

whom we remember from the film *Don't Be Afraid, I'm

With You*, where he sang the wonderful song

"How we lived, struggling,"

"and not fearing death." So, they

met because one of the

main news stories last week was

a mass brawl in southeast Moscow, where

on one side there were Azerbaijanis,

and on the other side Chechens.

Some 40 to 50 Chechens attacked that café

where Azerbaijanis were gathered; people were beaten there,

and a car was smashed.

Then there was even some kind of killing

connected to it, and so there was this

meeting. And the meeting itself was the right thing. Look,

let's imagine a hypothetical

situation: I'm the president — great situation,

again — and in my Moscow there are

mass clashes happening, Chechens and

Azerbaijanis. Well, I would encourage such a

meeting. I would call some

representative of the diaspora and say: look, your people

are all rioting there. It's the right thing

to meet on camera and say that you

all condemn this, call on your communities

to calm down, and somehow explain,

come to an understanding, smooth the situation over. That is

right. But let's listen to what

was specifically said at that meeting: who

was to blame for all this, and what was all this

done for? Naturally, it was done deliberately, these

guys, because all of it was done

on purpose.

I deliberately used — we understand

that there were third forces. I can't show this video in full,

but that's the idea.

And the other one agreed: it was third forces

who deliberately threw it in, planted it,

spread it around. And who could that have been, this

force? I don't know — maybe it was me,

or someone else. Explain it to me.

So then, tell me: who are these third forces? But

again, we're people living in the real world, we

understand that at a ritual meeting

of Azerbaijani representatives

and Chechen representatives, at this

meeting, of course no one can say,

"we are right and you are wrong." You can't say there

that the Azerbaijanis are to blame or that

the Chechens are to blame. It's simply impossible, even if

one of the sides actually is at fault. At least one

there — I just won't show this

video here — but as I understand it, there

some kind of conflict began, they were insulting

each other on social media.

Apparently, a Chechen man was brutally beaten on camera,

and with all of that, they

beat him while saying, "Ask forgiveness for the sake of

Allah" — that is always disgusting. So they

naturally went furious and ran off to fight.

But at such a ritual meeting

you cannot say that someone is to blame,

because that is not what the meeting is for.

The meeting is held in order to say

that no one is to blame. But damn it, they are

talking about a third force.

That is an absolutely hypocritical thing, and to me

it seems clear who is to blame here.

What is to blame here is the incited and

encouraged tradition of precisely

engaging in this bullshit

on social media, when people

insult each other, and then inevitably

someone has to track the other down and beat them, likewise

on camera, saying, "Apologize for the sake of

Allah" — some sort of ritual phrase.

And then off it goes. The fact that everyone

runs after one another, keeps track of

some insult or other, and then starts

beating each other up in real life,

assaulting or killing each other — that is the problem. And

right now this is

the favorite sport of Chechens, which

is absolutely encouraged by Ramzan

Kadyrov, who does the exact same thing himself:

he runs through comments looking for who

insulted him there and makes that person

apologize. The same thing is happening in

Dagestan.

The same thing is happening all across the Caucasus,

in the North Caucasus and the broader

Caucasus, and in Transcaucasia in particular, especially among

Azerbaijanis, we see the same thing.

Conflicts happen, mass brawls happen,

they happen often. Let's take a look at

this café in Tobolsk, yes,

a fight between Chechens and Tatars — it looks absolutely

brutal, really awful.

[music]

Interethnic conflicts do exist; unfortunately,

they always will. Anyone who has lived in

a dormitory knows this very well. I lived in

the dormitory of the Peoples' Friendship University (RUDN University in Moscow),

and alongside me there, by the way,

there were lots of Chechens around, and there was a constant

constant sense of this sort of — well —

There, Chechens and Kalmyks got into a brawl, chain against chain.

And so on—this will keep happening, because

one thing leads to another, and they end up

insulting each other on social media. You simply must not

encourage this. What should have been done

was for Polad Bülbüloğlu

and Adam Delimkhanov to come out—or rather, better yet, not them,

but Kadyrov and, I don’t know, President Aliyev

to say: “Guys, we condemn this and we will

punish everyone who engages in this

kind of inflaming conflict on social media.”

Someone insulted you on social media—that’s very bad, the idiot

who insulted you, yes, the person who insulted you

is a bad person.

Allah will punish him, but you must not go running around

cutting off some part of his body, much less

turning it into

an interethnic vendetta. And here in Moscow

we naturally really dislike

this kind of crap, where at night they insult

each other, and then it turns into outright

stabbings or attacks. By the way, this is

a café.

Local residents of Pechatniki (a district in Moscow) complained for a long time

for exactly this reason. So it’s not

some third party that is to blame, but those being encouraged

by the official authorities—that’s who is guilty.

Encouraged

not only by the authorities, but also by opinion leaders

in the Caucasian communities. This

practice that has taken hold—that any idiot

who writes something on social media

must not simply be insulted back in response,

but instead we have to find him, smack him

on the head,

with a pistol grip, and force him on camera

to apologize—this will escalate endlessly,

and endlessly we will keep seeing in

Moscow one showdown after another between Chechens and Uzbeks.

I can show you exactly the same kind of videos

where they insulted each other somewhere online,

then tracked the person down, beat him, and forced him to apologize.

This will go on forever until

the republic’s leadership itself stops

engaging in it. There is no “other side,” third

or twenty-third or whatever, here. I

was asked about the trade union—32,100 people are

watching us live right now.

They’re asking about it—I’ll drop that for now and say something about the trade union later.

Right now I want to talk about my new

favorite, though against that backdrop an old favorite has once again

been taking up a lot of my time lately.

I’ve had to devote a lot of attention to him—it’s Putin’s

cook.

Our favorite, Prigozhin, who poisoned

children in Moscow—by now this is simply

an established fact, and you may already be

tired of hearing about it.

Yes, I’ve talked about it, and because of that they’ve

called me all sorts of names there.

They’ve been mocking me in their

numerous media outlets, but fine—

I just want to point out how important it is

to keep this issue alive.

We kept hammering at it, a few small media outlets

started writing about it back in January, and

then we—Lyubov Sobol in particular—

took up this issue,

investigated it, and every day I

talked about it, in every program, and they

ignored it, ignored it—but we

forced them to do something about it.

It has now already been acknowledged that Concord is to blame.

Sobyanin finally came out today

with tweets that were, of course, absolutely deceitful.

He claimed that from the very beginning we

had the situation under control and

had been keeping it under control from day one,

and had ensured treatment

and individual medical monitoring for

the affected children. What brazen lies.

Even Sobol is writing to you: thank

the Civic Chamber—not them, but the concerned

Muscovites. If he were being honest, he would have written:

“Thank you to Lyubov Sobol and to those mothers

of the poisoned children who stood there with

pickets

outside City Hall to achieve at least something.

Thank you to that

mother who was forced, in order

to get treatment for her child,

to record videos outside City Hall.

And not to Sobyanin—those people spent two years, 22

months forcing you to do at least something,

and only then did you start moving. It is very

important not to be like those aquarium

fish that forget everything

a second later. We started hammering away at this issue with

Prigozhin, and we will keep hammering at it.

Because this is enormous—there are

contracts worth tens of billions of rubles.

And by the way, despite the fact that we

have been working very closely

on the investigation into Prigozhin,

even I did not fully grasp the scale of it.

Concord alone won and received from

the Moscow mayor’s office more than 30 billion rubles.

Then there’s this “Moscow Schoolchild” company; altogether

they already account for more than 50 billion. There are other

companies too—I think it comes to around 60

to 70 billion rubles in total, and in July they

are supposed to renew contracts

and get hospitals as well. These are

colossal, fantastic sums of money,

and Putin’s cook is making simply

a sea of money from it, because he supplies

rotten food. And this week we released

a statement from a person who

works directly in

Natalya Shilova, who directly

worked for Prigozhin’s companies. She

was in charge of 25 catering units there. The photos

were simply posted; even if one of them somehow slipped in

from somewhere on the internet, I went and checked—

of course all those

Prigozhin trolls latched onto that, but everything else

is absolutely authentic photography.

The meat, the fruit—everything they supply.

rotten, and today yet another person

someone like Fyodor, who was also a target

works in Prigozhin's structures; he gave

a long interview not only to We Are Open

Media and said that yes, all of this

is 100 percent absolutely true. Give me 30 seconds

let's watch. Fedorov V.A.

and basically, what Natalia is saying is

that this is not about water, it's about sanitation, it's

when an inspection by Rospotrebnadzor (Russia's consumer safety watchdog) or some other

agency checks how food is prepared in the kitchen unit

yes, that's absolutely how it is. I have often

published how this happens before

I can't say unequivocally that, but

to say that Natalia is somehow

exaggerating is quite difficult for me

because I published all of this at one time

but the person is also saying that you even

published all of this. Well, yes, it was published

but no one paid attention. So now

people need to pay attention. After all, Moscow

has a population of 10 million, the largest

city in Europe. It's a colossal market; he

is a monopolist, supplying all schools

and kindergartens

not a single food service provider in the world

has such a guaranteed market. Well,

can you imagine how much money that is, what an

enormous share he grabbed? I do not

doubt it

it is precisely this that explains the silence

of the Moscow government, their unwillingness

to acknowledge

this epidemic, their unwillingness to pay

compensation to these parents of affected

children, because Sobyanin has his own

corrupt cut. I refuse to believe

that they created this multibillion-ruble monopoly for him

and that no one there is lining their pockets

of course they are lining their pockets with very large

amounts of money. Today there was

a meeting at the Public Chamber

of Moscow

which was led by Konstantin Remchukov

the former head of Sobyanin's campaign staff, and there

the idea was very simple, basically

to spin the story about what a great job

Sobyanin is doing. But the parents of the children came, and they

of course just tore into Remchukov and

all the other figures from the

Public Chamber, all the other

officials there, the big shots and

there were a lot of very interesting speeches

I'll play two minutes for you

from a remarkable father. I don't even know his

name, unfortunately, but at some point

this person, far removed from politics, far from

all of that

just tells the blunt truth about how

Moscow is set up when it comes to feeding children

in general, what kindergartens are like. Let's

watch for two minutes, because this is

really interesting. Two minutes.

an outraged father: today, in the case of December 22

instructions had already been given, I believe

two months have passed, and today we

have a respected official telling us responsibly,

saying: this is your fault

ambitious parents. And the respected

representative of the department

tells us that this is not a serious enough reason

for them to simply

cut ties with the supplier. So your children are definitely

collapsing, yes? Is that serious enough?

and this is being said by an official put in charge of

education

we are the ones who pay him; he lives on our

taxes. This is not serious? We have a whole list of

complaints that were promised to us by

the principal. I am the principal of School No. 2051. No, we

simply have this many complaints

and besides that, the administration constantly does not

leave them unresolved; they keep correcting these mass

violations in some

and naturally this was bound to result in

mass poisoning; it was inevitable

you see, I simply turned a blind eye and even

appealed

what did the school do

the picture is this

it looks like this: they tell you, go on then, you want

your children not to come? We'll make it so

you understand, they hired people for pay

or something like that. No, the children stayed home so it would not

spread any further. Nothing, to this

day

and now they say the parents are to blame. Understand, the hospitals

have established the facts, and to sit here and

blame us for this

well, it's hard to argue with this man, isn't it?

what was it about at the very beginning there?

he is outraged, and naturally they

the parents say: you poisoned these

children. Concord, Prigozhin's company, poisoned at least 500 children

at a minimum, and most of them

were hospitalized

so let him be held responsible for it

in what way? Let him pay, let him compensate

at least for the medicines, and please add him to the

list of unscrupulous

suppliers

because he is an unscrupulous supplier

this has even been recognized by

Rospotrebnadzor (Russia's consumer safety watchdog), that because of him

the dysentery outbreak happened. And in response to that

looking these parents in the eye, the official

says, well, there are still not

sufficient grounds

did these children have to die for

there to be sufficient grounds for you? What

then would have to happen for you

if poisoning, severe poisoning

with hospitalization of 500 people, is not enough for you

then what would have to happen?

but we are not dropping this subject; we will

keep talking about it, and we can already see today

which means already

they are, as I said, trying to wriggle out of it

Peskov says that from the very beginning we

were following what was happening. Yes, you

were defending your Prigozhin from the very beginning.

And it is precisely because these parents, Sobol, and

a couple of journalists simply kept at it, as if

breaking through your wall of censorship,

that this topic remained in the media space.

That is why now everyone is speaking out, and

those mothers are doing a great job, and credit also goes to

our Lyuba, who is working on this, and

credit to those people who do not switch away

every second—who do not say, “Yesterday we discussed

dysentery, whatever, let’s move on to other memes,”

or, “Let’s find something else to talk about.” No—

this situation has to be seen through to the end, and we will

keep working on it, keep working on it. So, I was

just asked by Pasha Blokha what is happening with

Sobol’s investigation, but I already explained that.

Sibir writes: but prices are rising, so

they have to buy spoiled goods. Well,

exactly—if you are a

monopolist, open an economics textbook.

If Prigozhin is Putin’s so-called chief cook

of Putin,

and a monopolist, what will he do? He will

increase his profit. That is how it works; it is

a law of economics, just as much a law as

the laws of physics.

He will maximize his profit

because there is no competition. If there were

a couple of other companies, he would compete with them

on quality. But there is no competition,

so you maximize profit.

How? Why supply them with

first-grade meat if you can

supply third-grade meat instead?

Especially if you are sure that even when

you poison 500 children, nothing will happen to you anyway.

In the end they will just say, “Well, okay,

it is no big deal.”

“These things happen, that is life.” That is

apparently not sufficient grounds to

put him on the register of unscrupulous

suppliers.

Well, of course, in this situation they want

to make more money. Prigozhin needs

a plane, he needs a house, he needs even more—

a lot, a lot of money is needed to maintain

these troll factories, all these

newspapers that churn out lies. And as for the claim that

I met with Prigozhin and

extorted 300 million rubles from him (about several million U.S. dollars),

just imagine that situation.

That I walk in and say, “Prigozhin, Yevgeny Prigozhin,

pay me 300 million rubles.” We even

specifically requested

the surveillance footage from that hotel, because in

a hotel there are cameras on every floor,

everywhere we walked, there were plenty of cameras on us.

And we wrote to the hotel: give us those

camera recordings so that we can

tear Prigozhin apart right now—he is lying through his teeth.

But the hotel—look at their reply—they

told us, “Oh, sorry, all the video recordings

have been destroyed,” which is rather strange—

to destroy hotel surveillance footage so quickly.

We are not dropping this issue; we will keep

working on it. And now for some good news.

Hooray, hooray—the union is working, the union

is working. This whole thing that we

launched is actually working.

It is very hard and very slow, but

it is moving forward, in places where the authorities are not

so thick-headed—I apologize for the expression,

maybe it is not the best word for

a politician—in Yaroslavl Region.

There, two medical workers made public appeals

and spoke about

their salaries, about how

low those salaries are. They explained that

they are nowhere near what they are supposed to be and of course do not

correspond in any way to those May Decrees (Putin’s 2012 social spending pledges),

and there were many questions about

whether they would be fired the next day,

what would happen to them. And the doctors and

nurses themselves seem to want to join us,

but they are not that fearless—

after all, they are often public-sector employees,

and we asked

Irina Valkhanova, who recorded one

of those videos as a doctor, to record for us what

has happened to her now. She has released a video and explained

what happened after she spoke about salaries.

Let’s watch Irina—55 seconds.

Hello, my name is Irina Valkhanova.

I am a doctor at the Third Clinical Hospital.

Recently I recorded an appeal on behalf of

doctors regarding the failure to implement the May

Decrees. Many people are interested in what

happened to me and whether I was fired.

I will answer everyone at once: no, I was not fired.

On the contrary, today the hospital administration

entered into a dialogue. Wishes were expressed

and a plan of action for

cooperation was outlined. We found mutual understanding.

The chief physician wants to solve the problems

of the staff and is ready to discuss new

pay conditions.

I commit myself to taking part in the practical

implementation of this cooperation. And yesterday

Yaroslavl deputies adopted amendments to the

budget, and the salaries of doctors and

medical staff in municipal

institutions will be increased. Do not be afraid

to stand up for your rights. Join the

union—together we will achieve change.

Thank you to everyone who supported me and worried

about me. It is a terrible moment when I have to

praise the governor of Yaroslavl Region

and the deputies, many of whom are probably

members of United Russia, but that was the goal of our

union. From the very beginning we said:

we do not care who makes this happen, we do not

care. Let them now put it in their little United Russia brochures,

write, “We are so great,”

“we allocated a subsidy and raised salaries

for nurses and doctors.” Doctors, by the way,

still need further raises anyway.

are being brought up to the target level, because nurses already

have been raised to the level set by the May decrees (a set of presidential policy directives issued by Vladimir Putin in 2012).

Great, raise them and get your PR out of it.

Go ahead and say it had nothing to do with Navalny.

the trade union, and we all know perfectly well that United Russia members are behind this.

the wonderful governor, all those people we remember.

Yes, that’s exactly what they did. And the chief doctor

of the hospital—what, does he want his

employees to be paid poverty wages?

Of course he doesn’t. So he goes off somewhere

to his officials and says, well,

damn it, if you don’t want doctors

making a scene, recording public appeals, and bothering

everyone, then let’s raise salaries.

Let’s be cleverer, outsmart Navalny, and raise

doctors’ salaries. Yes, let’s do exactly that.

And they did it—good for them. I hope this keeps

happening. This is the first step,

the first move. But until you

demand it, no one will give you anything.

Because as long as you don’t demand it, they—

officials and deputies—don’t think you

really need it. If you stay silent, then

it means you can put up with it.

Your salary is 14,000 rubles a month (about $150), and you stay quiet, so

it must be fine—you probably have a side job,

or maybe you found buried treasure.

Or maybe, I don’t know, you’ve got some kind of

small household plot and you enjoy digging up

potatoes in your free time.

So everything must be fine for you. That’s how they

think. So join

the trade union. The Doctors’ Alliance is doing great work,

and we work with them—they’re great.

The Yaroslavl rallies were excellent—the medical workers did a great job.

Well done to the Yaroslavl deputies, and even

some United Russia members among them. Let’s see

what people are asking us here. Paul Kurilshchik

asks: after your investigation

in Cherkessk, people keep asking

the same question.

Have you thought about what will happen to the guys,

Alexei and Khervim, and how worried we are?

Please comment on the concern for the bloggers.

That matters, and of course we

are worried. We saw a lot in

that video where it all started—lots of

sarcastic comments like, “that’s the end for them,”

and so on. We’ll be following what happens to them,

of course we will.

And

we understand that they simply decided

to shoot a cool video and get lots of

views by showing off all

their fancy stucco work. Apparently they do

very good work in a very impressive

huge house. They wanted to make a video

about that, but it ended up becoming

the basis for a video about corruption.

The family is probably very upset about that, but

right now there’s so much public attention

around this that we think it will serve as

protection for these people. And we’ll keep an eye on

what happens to them.

I don’t think they’ll be very happy

to talk to us, but we’re ready

to talk nonetheless.

Still, was I supposed to stay silent?

Was I supposed not to talk about it? They sent me

a video of their gigantic house,

the kind of house that simply shouldn’t exist in this

city.

And I’m supposed to say, “Well, I’m not going to

publish anything”? No, I can’t do that.

So then, about the Nemtsov march in

St. Petersburg—yes, there will be a Nemtsov march in

St. Petersburg.

As I understand it, the Nemtsov march there

has been authorized. I’m having trouble right now—

sorry, I didn’t prepare—so I can’t

give the exact route, but there definitely is one.

Look it up online, check with Yashin—

he’s the main organizer in St. Petersburg.

Alexei will definitely be there.

They’re asking: tell us about the police—when

will police officers get a pay raise?

We get lots of messages from the police and from EMERCOM (Russia’s emergency services).

Create a union, guys—set up your own

police union. I promise to give you

this studio, just as we do for medical workers, just as we

do for teachers. I promise to talk about you

and demand an increase in your

salaries. But you need to create the union yourselves.

Water doesn’t flow under a лежачий камень (Russian proverb: “a rolling stone gathers no moss” / nothing happens unless you act). I can’t

do everything for you.

As for the party not being registered, we’re planning

to file again soon—this will be the seventh or

eighth round of registration already.

All right, I see that Acrylic Emperor

is asking about the market—the suburban Moscow

transportation market has been taken over by one of

Chaika’s partners, and now there isn’t enough transport. Is

anything known about this? I

constantly see reports that in

Krasnogorsk—well, in Krasnogorsk—there’s some kind of

huge problem with public

transport. Right now the whole Moscow region

is groaning because, indeed,

Chaika or his partners

have started carving up the transport market there.

They’ve created a monopoly there too, and

naturally, any monopoly leads

to worse services. We haven’t looked into

this situation closely yet, but we will.

Now to my regular segment, already the fourth show

in a row. Today this part of the program

is called “He Saved a Woman.” Our favorite,

Alexander Beglov,

gave us something to laugh about this week with the story that

he saved a woman. The story itself isn’t funny—

a roof collapsed there, at one of

the oldest and most famous universities,

a place known for winning programming championships.

People there are world-class, and then part of the roof

came down. Fortunately, no one was killed.

People were evacuated. And what does

Governor Beglov, our brave man,

who very much wants to get elected, do?

allocates the money or sorts it out afterward

had this roof repaired or, well, or in

the end, takes care of clearing

for example, snow, organizes this cover

so that people don’t fall through, no, and this

is just a vile scoundrel

in the first minutes he rushes there, and in the next

within three minutes they put out news saying

that Beglov saved a woman and personally led

the woman out from under the rubble, when in fact he was just there

there was immediately a flood of information saying

apparently Prigozhin was involved in this too

Beglov saved a woman, but still, well, how

with collapsed buildings there, he, in theory,

shouldn’t have been allowed in there; even rescuers couldn’t get in

but no one pays attention to that

they show us some videos of how

there he is, putting on this woman

a little coat; and we can see that by then he had already

made his way inside

risked his life, lifted the woman from under

a beam, and carried her out in his arms

set her down, took off his Superman suit very

quickly and then

put his official’s suit back on, glued

his little mustache back on, and throws a coat over the woman

and this modest part is what ended up

everywhere; they started promoting it for money on

that very same day, including paid posts on VKontakte (Russian social network)

paid posts saying Beglov saved a woman from under

the rubble; only later did they interview

the woman, and she said, basically, that no one

saved me, there was no

Beglov there; he just shook my hand and gave me

his coat. Let’s listen to the woman

whom that crook Beglov did not save

some crane from colitis

oh, come on, who even— and there below

he was standing

the governor was standing there, and he shook

my hand, he wasn’t supposed to fill

he made up a canard, making it seem like he was somehow

the one who led me out, but he only saw me outside

the guys were great, they behaved calmly

they helped, encouraged me

there was one more thing said there

more or less nonsense

and then I was simply led by the guys

where I needed to go, you understand; well, admit it, what kind of

utter crooks do you have to be

to lie about something like this, and they

every time something happens—God forbid,

a tragedy—and if you write

well, they missed a terrorist attack, then they come running

the United Russia people (members of the ruling party) shrieking, how dare you

to score publicity off bloodshed

how dare you, supposedly, not support

the national leader in these difficult moments

while they themselves ran there to get in the way of

the rescuers with his camera and all these

press secretaries; he ran there and started

lying about a rescued woman. What a

vile scoundrel. I hope that in

St. Petersburg

well, in the election no one will vote for that bastard

no one. I corrected myself, and I know when it will take place:

the Nemtsov March (memorial march for opposition politician Boris Nemtsov) in St. Petersburg is on the 24th

at 2:00 p.m. in Lenin Square, at

Finlyandsky Station; gather there, come

including in order to say everything

you think about the acting governor

well, what else is left

for this man? All he has left is to lie, and what

is left for his subordinates is only to lie

and the cherry on top of this whole situation was

some kind of absurdity, I mean, they

launch the story “Beglov saved a woman” for money

“Beglov saved a woman,” and immediately running in comes

that guy—remember Albin, the one who

built the Zenit Arena and spent a long time arguing

with me on Facebook, writing to me that, supposedly, I

had never even smelled cement, while he was a great builder

while I published his 100%

biography, from which it was clear that he

had never really worked a day in his life

so he came running and immediately

put out news saying, you know,

Beglov saved a woman. But this is some kind of

habitual thing for him, because

back in the 1980s, in Spitak (city in Armenia devastated by the 1988 earthquake), when

there was that infamous terrible earthquake

when many people died

he supposedly saved a child from under the rubble, just like during

that story that came up, and

and there will be much more of this: Beglov

will save a kitten

it will turn out that during the Afghan

war he went there and bombed

the mujahideen, saving wounded soldiers, and during

the Siege of Leningrad, Beglov supposedly went around and

personally handed out loaves of bread that

he had baked beforehand with his own

caring hands, and so

on and so on and so on. We will see many vile

and disgusting things, and

there will be videos too, because these

videos and photos and everything else—because they

have no other way to win except

through lies and falsification, and

they are already preparing for falsification; they have already said

that, supposedly, observers—deputies

a St. Petersburg deputy from United

Russia said that, you know, there are

these outsider observers, fly-ins, fly-ins

nonsense—they come and

and observe. Imagine doing such a

terrible thing: coming and observing. So we won’t

let them in; supposedly only those who live here

should be allowed in

and this may seem like nonsense, but it is important

for example, observers were sent to

Chechnya; we at {URL_1} sent

observers to that very Karachay-

Cherkessia, because naturally the locals

are afraid to observe; now outsiders

won’t be allowed in there. Why? So that they can

of course falsify the results, that’s why

and by the way, this deputy

Romanov, who spoke out about

election observers, is the best, ideal

example of why people should follow Smart

Voting. This crook and thief and

liar and election fraudster who wants

to drive observers out of polling stations—he

won in District 217 in St. Petersburg

with 30.3 percent, which

is not much, you'll agree. In that same district

Oksana Dmitriyeva was running, and they sank

Oksana Dmitriyeva by putting forward

several fake Oksana Dmitriyevas who were

on the ballot. You can see: Dmitriyeva Oksana,

Dmitriyeva Oksana—there were three of them. If 3–5

percent of the votes for the real Oksana Dmitriyeva

were siphoned off by those look-alikes who were nominated first,

then some number of votes was stolen from her.

But since that crook Romanov

got very little overall,

if Smart

Voting had been in place there, and if we had convinced

just two percent of voters—2

percent—to come out and vote

for Dmitriyeva as the strongest

opponent, she

would have become a deputy. You may not

like her, or you may like her; you can

argue about all that, but agree: it would have been

a hundred times better than having some

damn Romanov sitting there. So

sign up for Smart Voting—it is

very important for throwing people like that out, in

Moscow and especially in St. Petersburg, they

can

be thrown out. To do that, people need to vote

all together, as one, using the same list.

I have a lot of topics, but I've already gone over the 10-minute

program slot, and still I can't help discussing

our former FSB director, now

the chairman—well, both chairman and

effectively secretary—of the Security

Council, still a very important

person for Putin, someone who deals with

all sorts of things connected with the security services,

security, imprisonments,

the persecution of dissenters, and so

on. This is Nikolai Patrushev, the former

director of the FSB. He amazed us when, at a

meeting in Tyumen, he met with

the heads of various Ural-region

official bodies and explained what is corrupting

young people, what is corrupting schoolchildren, how

and why schoolchildren are behaving so terribly. And

he said the following: a destructive

influence on the consciousness and behavior

of schoolchildren comes from the spread on the

internet of ideas of nationalism, separatism,

neo-Nazism, criminal subculture,

suicide, cults of violence, and personal

enrichment. And well, after all

the rest—when he listed

nationalism and separatism, all those '-isms' are

the sort of negatively charged terms

I could more or less tolerate.

But when Patrushev got to personal

enrichment, I simply couldn't hold back.

I practically jumped up and said: you hypocritical

old man.

Photo, please. This is a house in

Serebryany Bor (an elite residential area in Moscow)

that is worth 1 billion rubles, and it

belongs to the Patrushev family. Where did he get

the money?

Isn't that exactly

the kind of thing—let me put it this way—

personal enrichment that has a destructive

influence on the behavior of schoolchildren?

He should have come out and said:

You know, guys, what has a destructive effect on schoolchildren's behavior

is nationalism,

xenophobia, and also the fact that my family, for reasons

that are entirely unclear, bought a house for

1 billion rubles. And what also has a very destructive effect on schoolchildren's behavior

is that my son

became a senior vice president of VTB (a major Russian state-owned bank) at the age of 30.

Now he, Dmitry Patrushev,

heads a state structure; as always,

he's everywhere, attached to everything,

latched onto everything. Now he heads

the Ministry of Agriculture, and at the Agriculture Ministry

he keeps doing whatever it is our

family does to get richer. That has a very bad effect on

schoolchildren. But why didn't he say that?

It's such a shame, so terrible. And my second

son—let me tell you about him. You know, guys,

when you schoolchildren found out that

my second son, Andrei Patrushev, at age 25

became an adviser to the chairman of Rosneft (Russia's state oil company),

you schoolchildren simply started behaving

in an absolutely, terribly destructive way,

so destructively—really, how

do these people even dare say such things?

And with the younger Patrushev there was

a very funny story. He was

being awarded

for some great achievements at Rosneft,

but it turned out that the drilling of that

super-well had actually been completed

by entirely different companies. But

the sheer nerve—it's unbelievable, obviously.

I apologize, but all those governors

sitting there know about Patrushev's

billion-ruble house,

and still they all nod along: yes, yes, yes, personal

enrichment, how terrible. These are people

personally obsessed with money, people

grabbing everything in sight left and right. But that

man didn't just receive a somewhat

larger apartment—he somehow got, in Serebryany Bor,

or somehow bought, a house for

1 billion rubles, placed his children

at the head of the largest corporations, state banks,

and now ministries. He has simply sunk

some kind of tubes into this state

through which money is being sucked out of

our country, out of our pockets—everything

is being drained—and then he tells us, guys,

this is so destructive, this affects you so badly.

Personal enrichment is at work here—take Voronova, for example.

Doctors in Yaroslavl, here—your body is...

...for personal enrichment, because people even...

...give you a few bottles of champagne...

...bring you boxes of chocolates—it's awful, really.

That's how they got rich, and it's destructive.

This is how things work in the Beautiful Russia of the Future.

When officials are required to account for...

...where they got this or that...

...piece of real estate, everything will become much easier.

Illicit enrichment really...

...has a very destructive effect, and this...

...illicit enrichment by Putin's...

...officials, in the Beautiful Russia of the Future...

...we will examine every case very carefully...

...and in particular, we will ask Nikolai...

...Patrushev: my dear friend, how did you...

...buy this house for a billion? Thank you all very much.

See you next week.