Sobchak and the election, a migrant uprising, Lyaskin beat himself up, intimidation of a schoolboy in Vladivostok

[music]

Hello everyone, it's 8:18 p.m. in Moscow.

That means we're live in the Navalny Live studio.

I'm Alexei Navalny, here to

discuss the latest news with you. What's

happening in our country that's worth paying attention to?

You can send me questions on Twitter using

the hashtag #Navalny2018. We have lots of

different topics today.

But I'll start immodestly — I'll start with myself,

with our campaign. You probably know that

we've begun an active autumn tour,

traveling to the regions and holding active

public appearances in cities. Right after this

broadcast, I'm heading to the airport and flying to

Novosibirsk, where tomorrow at 6:00 p.m.

I have an event.

And I want to say that so far these trips are going

great. Thank you very much to everyone who

comes to these meetings in the cities, because

even in relatively small

cities — Murmansk, for example, is still

drawing thousands of people. And of course,

what can we say about such huge

cities as Yekaterinburg or

Omsk?

What's the main takeaway from this? There are two takeaways.

First — or rather, there are two things people

are sick of. That's the conclusion: people are really

tired of monopoly. They're tired of

being constantly told that

especially in the regions, everyone is supposedly so

pro-Putin, everyone loves United Russia so much, that

when people finally get a chance

to show, even just by coming to a rally, that

“Guys, no — please notice us.

We live here in the region, but that doesn't mean

we're just going to keep nodding along all the time,

pretending everything is wonderful.” No, they don't want

to put up with monopoly. Everyone is deeply

fed up with it. That's exactly why our

rallies — there are lots of arguments about attendance,

some say around 8,000, others say no, no,

6,000. “No, are you crazy? No,”

“6,500.” But we're not very interested

in taking part in those arguments. The main thing

is that nobody denies that among

political rallies, these were the biggest

held in these cities in

recent years.

And that also reflects the second thing people are sick of.

The second thing they're tired of is that

they're tired of this kind of election

campaigning, including presidential campaigns,

the way it's always done. People want

candidates to come to them. People want

them to speak in front of them. And I think this is

exactly the right strategy for us:

to behave like normal, real

candidates, as if we were already living right now

in the beautiful Russia of the future.

Despite what they say — “Yes, we

won't let him run, the campaign isn't real” — I

try to behave like a normal

candidate. What is a normal candidate supposed to do?

Come to Murmansk or

Yekaterinburg — it doesn't matter — stand there in the rain,

answer people's questions, and

tell them about your program, your

ideas, your

view of what's happening. People appreciate that

because, well, because

they're fed up. Eduard Chernenko writes to me — and he's absolutely right, I see —

“All the presidential candidates have eighty headquarters between them,

and of those,

Navalny has all 80.”

That's exactly how it is. Several people have already

announced that they're running in the election — and what are they

doing? I'm not even criticizing

these specific candidates right now — Zyuganov,

Yavlinsky, or Putin. I'm criticizing the

political practice itself. It really

— I won't even shy away from the word — infuriates me. You've

announced your candidacy, so hold some meetings.

What are you doing? Remember how in the last

presidential election there was that remarkable

candidate Mikhail Prokhorov — he

remember how many meetings with

voters he held during his entire

campaign? Six.

That's not how election

campaigns can work. It shouldn't be that

some strange people in Moscow

meet for debates that are watched by

relatively few people, because the main

candidate isn't there. They do

nothing at all. If they travel to the regions, they

meet with their own activists. But these

normal, uncensored, human

meetings just don't happen. And one of the goals of our

campaign is to break this

disgusting political practice and

force everyone else to start moving

along with us. We very much want

other candidates, looking at us,

to do the same, so there can be a real comparison.

We've held a meeting — let the others

come to Murmansk, Yekaterinburg, or

Omsk and hold their own meetings. Then we'll see

what questions were asked there, and people will watch

and be able to compare one candidate with

another. That's why these meetings are

so important to us, and we'll keep holding them.

Although, of course, right now we are

facing major resistance.

And that resistance will grow.

After last weekend, when we had

such extremely successful meetings, they

— I'll be honest — surprised even us a little. We

expected people to come. We have excellently functioning

headquarters, real headquarters,

not some fake setup, and not just some

campaign where we, you know, just hang up

photos of random people with balloons.

No — people are genuinely working with us. We

knew people would come, but we were pleasantly

surprised by how many actually showed up. I

think that, of course, the Kremlin — I don't think it

I’m sure the local authorities were too.

They were simply shocked by how many people

showed up. That is exactly why, already this

week—whereas last week we, in

various cities, submitted applications for rallies

and received 27 refusals—now there are already more than 50

refusals, and we have now seen real

serious resistance, which

is taking all sorts of, uh, different

forms. But one of the, of course, most

ugly and age-old forms is intimidating

people—especially intimidating young

people, and the kind of thing that is happening in schools.

Many of you have probably already seen this

video with a recording of a conversation

with a 16-year-old schoolboy in Vladivostok, where

I’ll be this weekend. They assembled a whole

group there, a whole team: there was

the principal, some psychologist, an inspector from

the juvenile affairs commission, and they

were intimidating this young man because

he had put on a badge reading

“Navalny 2018.” A short video—let’s

watch it so you can simply recall what

this is about. On what day can we

meet?

I don’t know what issue you wanted to

meet with me about.

Right now.

Well, now we’ve met about that issue.

With my parents, I can do Monday.

I understood that.

A submission to the commission for

juvenile affairs. Tell me, please,

why are you now just brazenly lying

that you don’t know that you have been

placed on the commission’s register? But no one

told me. — So you don’t know? — I don’t know, I

wasn’t warned; apparently they did it without me.

They put me on it. — There is your signature stating

that you were notified that you are

on the register. — That’s not true. I was notified that I

would have, today, a court hearing, roughly

speaking—and the hearing already took place. Those materials

that I, in the Soviet school system—well, I was

a little Octobrist and

a Pioneer (Soviet youth organizations), and of course we had

things of that sort,

dress-downs. I remember someone burned so much hay there.

But I studied in military towns—those are

always kind of half-village places—and

we expelled those children from the Pioneers. But

this now, in the 21st century, in 2017,

when he is being threatened with prison,

with various commissions, with ending up on such

lists that you’ll never again be admitted to any university

—for what? For a badge reading

“Navalny 2018.” And in a country whose

Constitution says that it is

a democratic country. And these

disgusting adults are, basically, forcibly

going after a sixteen-year-old boy—who, by the way,

is brave; he stands up to them. He doesn’t

agree with them at all, and they lie and

pressure him. But this is the disgusting

thing that is happening. And this is one of the reasons

why we are running our election

campaign. Because these things disfigure

the country; they disfigure education, among

other things. What can these teachers possibly teach

if they behave this way? And this

boy came out of that room of

punishment and spoke with his

peers. Everyone knows that our principal

is

a liar,

a dishonest person. Everyone knows that they

work for this disgusting regime,

and do so on their own initiative. Maybe

you saw that in today’s post I

published an interview with this boy, and his

homeroom teacher told him

that only a traitor could come to school

wearing such a badge, and that she was obliged to report

to the school principal about this

“betrayal.” But how will they

regard these teachers? How will they

regard education, or school in general?

But it is obvious that this breaks things overall. These

methods are now being used in all

regions. In Novosibirsk we are seeing

mass mailings and even something like

commercial ads claiming that supposedly

special cameras will record everyone,

your faces will be entered into files, and

based on those files, uh, later we will

expel you or refuse to admit you to

certain universities. All of this is, of course, complete

lies, but it is being spread by the authorities themselves.

And many—well, I don’t know whether many or not many—

some people probably do listen

to it; at least that is their

calculation. Well, we’ll see whether it works out

or not. I will speak regardless of

how many people come: if there are many people, good; if there are few,

that too is part of my work as a candidate, and I

will do it. In Vladivostok, they are writing that

they will close the bridge to

Russky Island

so that from the campus

of Far Eastern Federal University people cannot

get to the meeting. When we were first

told about this, I thought it was

some kind of joke, but then

confirmations started coming in; the local press is also

saying that under the pretext of either

a marathon or something else, the bridge will be

closed.

In Novosibirsk, uh, *Matilda* will be shown

deliberately a month earlier

than its nationwide premiere in order to

distract some of the people from this

rally. It is the only screening of *Matilda*.

And in Krasnoyarsk, wonderfully enough, there

the official refusal to authorize the rally was based on

the claim that Navalny has no right

to speak about a better future for Russia. That is

almost exactly how it was worded, verbatim.

speaks and talks about images

of a better future, so that means a refusal

to let you hold this rally, one way or

another

Right now I'm flying to Novosibirsk, then I

will be in Vladivostok, in Khabarovsk, everywhere

in all three of these cities at 6 p.m.

Please come to these meetings

and bring your friends and acquaintances with you

Support me or don't support me, if there are

people you know who criticize me and

want to ask me

tough questions, bring them along, excellent

I'm ready for those questions; again, that's also

part of a candidate's job, and I will do it

Please help me notify as

many people as possible that these

meetings are taking place; it's very important. My

screen is just exploding with messages, where

our editor is writing to me marked urgent

saying that Nikolai Lyaskin is not being released

from the police station right now, even though a very

and they're conducting a personal search, that

is, the victim here, our Nikolai Lyaskin—he

was hit on the head with a pipe, and now, as I

understand it, they're conducting a personal search of him and

apparently taking away his phone and things like that

but we'll talk about Lyaskin in quite

some detail today. We'll see, maybe

some more news will come in

smb From Russia writes to us

Just a fact: our teachers at the

staff meeting before September 1 (the start of the school year in Russia)

were forbidden to criticize, to criticize

the state's education policy. And

why were they forbidden? Why did anyone even

think of such an idea? Because

any normal teacher is going to criticize

the education policy

of the state right now, because even a normal

teacher, even if they have a more or less

decent salary—though all of them have

tiny salaries—what do they do? Do they teach

someone? They spend all day filling out

some paperwork. Teachers are groaning all across the

country because they simply can't keep

endlessly dealing with this kind of

reporting instead of, uh, teaching

children. In Ufa, lawlessly, they are not

approving a rally, writes Viktor R.

What are we going to do?

What do you mean—it's not only in Ufa; in most

cities, they arbitrarily refuse to approve

rallies. You probably saw that in the city of

St. Petersburg it was stated outright

that they would not approve it because Navalny

is a provocateur and his supporters are provocateurs

but we will hold them, and they will all

have to approve them—we will demand

approval, because it's a simple matter

either I have the right to meet with

people, or people have the right

to hear candidates out, or we give up

that right. As long as we have some

approved events, and we want

to hold approved events, all

our rallies are held and go very

well, very organized, with a high

level of public order. But if

they keep not agreeing—if they keep

refusing us—that means, yes, am I supposed to

stop the election campaign?

No, I will not stop it. And Evgeny

Nilchenko asks: has Lyaskin been released

from the police station? No, he still hasn't been released. Ksenia

Sobchak

And I'm flooded with questions, and now I

will talk about it. A lot of people are asking me

how I feel about Sobchak

planning to put forward her candidacy for

president, whether I've heard about it, whether I like

it or not, whether I will

quarrel with Ksenia Sobchak, given that

well, I'm on good terms with her

I really am on good

terms with her—well, in a sense

friendly, companionable terms—and with her husband

I'm friends

And now I'll answer all these questions

Let's launch a poll right away that

will run on Twitter and on

VK, and it will read as follows

Does your

political interests, uh, align with candidate Ksenia

Sobchak? While we discuss this,

please vote. And how do I feel about it?

I feel extremely negative about it, and it will be

easy—very easy—for me to criticize Ksenia Sobchak

in completely plain terms, despite the fact

that I am with her on

good terms, because

I still don't understand—it seems she has made

the decision not even to put forward her

candidacy, but to take part in this

rather disgusting Kremlin game

called, let's

drag into the election some kind of

liberal laughingstock in order to

distract attention—and that's the only way

to describe it. It's not that Ksenia Sobchak

has decided to do something there. I mean, she

has not yet announced that she is taking part

but judging by the way she is more than

posturing, and neither saying yes nor no, back and

forth, she does in fact want to run

and I—well, I will be very upset and

disappointed by Ksenia's behavior if she

takes part in all of this. And

that's because the Kremlin's plan here is very

simple: they

well, I don't know, with some kind of

money, opportunities, or something else

access to television, want to

tempt her, draw her in. Her campaign will probably

be financed by some oligarchs

or by the Presidential Administration. For what purpose?

Because they need, as I already said on

this program on air, a caricatured

a liberal candidate, especially in circumstances

where, if they decide they don’t want to let me run

in the election, they’ll say, “Guys, sure, we’re not going to let

Navalny run — he’s an extremist,”

a criminal. But you wanted

someone to represent that position — well, here’s Ksenia

Sobchak. Look, she says exactly

what the opposition wants — look

how great she is. She, uh,

supports paid education, paid

healthcare, paid parking,

she supports raising the retirement age.

There you go — that’s your candidate, there she is,

a wonderful opposition figure. After all, the whole opposition

wants exactly that. In other words, Sobchak, being

a very vivid, recognizable,

attractive person, but holding

rather brutal views on politics

and economics — I mean, she has this sort of

you know, early-1990s democrat

mindset, the kind that recoils at the word “social.” That’s

a sincere position. That is, she won’t

even lie, she won’t

pretend, and she won’t say

terrible things on purpose

just to get fewer votes — she’ll

try to get more, and she’ll say

it outright: yes, we need to raise

the retirement age, that’s great.

Uh, she’ll repeat all those monstrous

things of hers about how all these people in

Russia are so poor — why? Well, because

they’re drunks, they don’t want to work, and all

the rest of those disgusting

clichés that were handed down to us

from the 1990s, about how

everything should be paid for, from

parking to healthcare, and, uh, plus

all of that — let’s put it all against the backdrop of

beautiful photos of yacht vacations,

entertainment, *Dom-2* (a Russian reality TV show), *Blond in Chocolate* (a Russian reality show),

and everything else, uh.

That, as I understand it, is

the Kremlin’s plan: to put forward

a caricature of a liberal with brutal

positions, who is supposed to embody

the opposition, so to speak, and who

will naturally get very few votes

and once again drive the public into a rage

simply by her political stance, and for

some fairly long

period will once again make the word “opposition”

a dirty word, because, well, there it is —

look, look at this face

of the opposition. There she is, sailing around on a yacht, and

she thinks we all need to

raise the retirement age, and that in Russia

there are so many poor people because they work poorly

or don’t work hard enough, uh.

[music]

Why does Sobchak herself need this, you ask me?

Well, once again, I hope Ksenia

will probably see this filler clip, or

maybe she’s watching it now. Ksenia, I hope you

won’t take part in all this, and that

everything I’m saying now won’t lead to you later coming to me

and saying, “Navalny, why did you

criticize me so unfairly? You thought badly

of me. I would never have gotten involved

in that.” If that turns out to be the case, I will, uh,

offer you my sincere apologies, and I hope that

won’t happen. But in general, why would

Sobchak do it? That’s more or less clear. We have to

recognize, after all, that she is not a politician.

She

works — and I say this without any irony — but

in a somewhat different field: she’s in

show business. So, uh, for her, taking part in

an election campaign, with any

result, even if everyone calls her

a puppet, a spoiler, whatever — that’s

still a plus for her show-business career, because

it gets you more likes, more

Instagram followers, and you get paid

higher fees for hosting weddings. It’s one thing when you

show up to host the wedding of some

businessman or some crooked official and

get €35,000 for emceeing it, but

it’s another thing when the groom’s father says, “And

now our wedding is being hosted by the future

president of Russia, Ksenia Sobchak,” and the whole

wedding will be accompanied by those

great jokes. Well, of course that

doubles the price tag. So

it’s roughly clear why this might appeal to

Ksyusha, but I very much hope she

won’t play this rather

unpleasant game. Austin Asphalt writes to me:

“In any case, she has the right

to run. What’s wrong with that? If she’s

a bad candidate, people just won’t vote for her, and

that’s that.” Of course, yes — she’s the same kind of person as

I am, with the same constitutional rights.

So yes, she has the right to run.

The other issue is that we have to look at

these things as a whole. We understand that if

you want to run, well then

run: set up campaign offices, make

political statements. You can’t just

do it like that, you know — bang, launch it, and

suddenly collect 300,000 signatures. Right now

we’re at the point where we have around eighty

headquarters, and a thousand people come to meet me,

but we worked for nine months. We

raised money, we opened these offices, I

met with volunteers, we carried out

enormous, colossal, expensive

work: raising money, holding rallies.

In other words, it’s a process. But if you just

up and announce on Instagram tomorrow, “I’m

running for president” — where are you

collecting signatures? “Oh, signatures for her

will somehow be collected.” And where is your campaign office? “Oh, the office will somehow

organize itself.” Everything will get done because

the presidential administration will do it for you.

We understand very well how

all this works. It’s impossible to collect

300,000 signatures if you don’t already have

the fundraising infrastructure, no matter how many

fairy tales they tell us about how it

will supposedly collect money through some kind of commercial

enterprises. Well, we

understand that this is deception, so of course she

has the right to take part in the elections, but

she does not have the right to deceive us

about who really is

the real interested party and the real

organizer of such an election

campaign. Alexander Mikheev, well, it’s obvious

that they decided to show that we

are giving up our position, to distract attention. Well,

of course, it’s right there on the surface. In

fact, I think that not only

Ksenia... Alexei, turn the cup around,

otherwise it reads “USA, hi.” No, it says

“Hi, Ksyusha,” not “USA, hi.”

I think that not only Ksenia will not be

brought in — there are many different

candidates being considered. Well, of course, from

the Kremlin’s point of view, Ksyusha could probably

be one of the quite successful candidates

for these caricature liberals, because

once again, she sincerely believes in all

these rather monstrous things that she

says. “Alexei, why are you being so harsh?”

a girl asks me. I’m not

being harsh. As a candidate should, I

have to say everything plainly. Once

again, if she were sitting here, I would have

said it all to her directly, to her face, and

in fact, we even met not so

long ago. I said roughly the same thing, directly

and to her face. That’s my position.

We’re not playing games here. This is not

some intrigue about who should

host some show or not

host it. This is politics. It’s a question of

how the country will develop, how

the opposition will develop, what the

situation in our country will be, possibly for years

to come. So I simply don’t think

there’s any room for being delicate here, so I

once again, I have a very good attitude toward her.

I respect her as a person who

really earns her living through hard

work. She is actually a very

hardworking and capable person, but

taking part in politics in this format is

of course spoiler activity, deception, and participation

on the same side as the crooks.

And fgnius asks: “Is Ksyusha even

this flamboyant candidate, a child from a well-connected

family, living in a bubble, living however she wants, and

then sitting there like a princess, saying everyone else is

trash?” Well, she really is from a

well-connected family, and again she will be presented as

a privileged rich kid, but she is, as I already

said, quite a hardworking

person, and she earns her money, well,

not at all just because she comes from

some family and receives it. Well, and

let her keep earning it there — I would like

her to stay there rather than

make money from election campaigns.

Alexander Mikheev asks me whether

teachers who stuff ballot boxes

at every election are traitors. Well, of course they

are. They have betrayed us. They are not only traitors, they

are criminals as well, and traitors, because

they are working against the country’s future.

Finally — I’ve been waiting for this message. In huge

letters: “Kolya has been released,” wrote Zhdanov.

Zhdanov is the head of the legal department

of FBK (Anti-Corruption Foundation). He writes that Lyaskin has been released, and

we’ll discuss Lyaskin in a moment. For now, please

write to me, because I can’t see from here

what our voting results are

regarding Ksyusha: does candidate Sobchak represent

your interests or not?

While people are writing to me, I’ll read another one. Oleg

Bourbon says: “A test for Ksenia Sobchak of whether she has

any common sense.”

Well yes, it is a test, and we can see that common

sense is clearly there, because she still hasn’t

thrown herself into it headfirst, as if into deep water. As

it seems to me, the decision is about 80% made

that she will take part, but she

has not yet announced it, because she

is, as I understand it, meeting with various people,

trying to feel out all these

different options, and well, it may

turn out that someone will say, “Oh, it

was all a joke,” or some kind of TV project.

“What should I do?” asks Yesenia Meldoniyu.

“If you constantly run into prejudiced

treatment among

teachers because of your political

views, even though there is no crime involved?”

Political views cannot, in themselves,

constitute any crime at all.

But I’m curious — where do you study if

you are constantly facing prejudiced

treatment from teachers because of

your political views? A normal person

will either agree with your

political views, or simply

leave you alone and not discuss them

with you. That’s probably an important

point: I’m certainly not suggesting that everyone

drop out of their universities, vocational colleges, or

schools if you have political

conflicts with teachers. But it is the first

sign of a bad educational institution if

they try to persecute you for your

political views. So, on Twitter,

14% of people say that Ksenia Sobchak

represents their political views, while

86% say she does not. On VKontakte,

Ksenia Sobchak represents the interests of six

percent of our viewers, while 94

percent say no. Well, as usual,

VKontakte is more radical, Twitter less

radical, although here it’s not entirely clear

what the word “radical” even means in this context.

Putin’s visit to Yandex — did we talk about that?

No, asks Paul Schutza 34 rus. Well,

What a name—we haven't talked about that.

There was a lot of discussion today,

all sorts of jokes connected with what kind of

security measures Yandex took there.

They wouldn't let anyone go to the bathroom alone,

and one person wasn't let in at all. Well, actually,

nothing all that

extraordinary happened at Yandex.

The day after tomorrow is, I think, its twentieth anniversary.

It's a hugely important event for the company, and that's why

well, they invited Putin. Most likely,

he probably even wanted to come himself—he's

currently trying to be friendly with high

technology and to make it look like

it's friendly with him. It's clear that security measures in

Russia are, in principle,

a little ridiculous when you look at them. I

understand that at Yandex they simply

dismantled the bike parking. Well, it's not hard

to imagine why—they could have removed it,

and they did remove it, but overall, well,

it was right that Putin went there.

Yandex did the right thing by inviting him.

After all, it's a giant company that we

are all proud of, and it's right that the head

of state—even if he's as unpleasant a

man as Putin—still came to the

largest internet company. I mean, well,

it seems petty to me to pick at them

over the fact that they invited him

or that they didn't do something to him there,

didn't hit him over the head with a computer. Well,

probably

there's no need to do that, Darya.

Starik... Starikashkina says: Alexei,

your campaign is changing the political

culture of Russian society. That is

our indirect goal. Of course,

we are fighting for power, but we want all

candidates to run proper election

campaigns, so that there is a different political

process, so that a candidate who does not

do the same things we do, in

particular, who does not meet outdoors

with city residents in any weather,

would not be considered a candidate at all.

That is very important to us. Alexei, my

opinion remains the same: if Navalny is not on the ballot,

my family and I will not

go to the polls. Let VV (Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin) play his games.

Alexei, you're thinking absolutely correctly. If

they don't let us into the election—well, it's not about

me, but about independent candidates in

general—uh, then what kind of election is that? Well, to

go vote in that case is unnecessary.

The attack on Nikolai Lyaskin. Let's

discuss it—this is an extremely pressing topic.

Of course, it concerns—this has long since

gone beyond just our

election campaign and our headquarters. It

concerns, in general,

the situation in the country, because at first

it looked monstrous: the head of our

headquarters in Moscow—officially called the coordinator—

went out to help us carry leaflets, and he

was hit on the head with an iron pipe. Uh,

it looked monstrous. It was clear that

he had been set up there. But what happened

afterward

looks even more monstrous.

So, what does the police version look like? Uh,

It was announced repeatedly and shown on

television. But, for example, federal

channels like NTV didn't talk about the fact that

this was clearly an attack on Lyaskin. Instead,

they all started pushing this wild

story, and I think that is where

the whole scheme lies.

So what is the police of the

Russian Federation trying to prove to us?

That some man—by the way, let's

watch a short clip of his

police interrogation, which was broadcast on

television even before Lyaskin

took part in the identification lineup. That's a separate

absurd point: Lyaskin is about to

identify the attacker, but millions of

people have already seen him on TV.

Let's watch a short clip.

For two people, for one he didn't show

the photographs,

including one of himself,

and promised to go to the police and file reports, as it were.

Basically,

he offered 150,000 rubles (about $2,500 at the time), and that's not a small amount of money,

especially since

he said he wouldn't file a report.

That was what struck me.

Now tell me, please: does he look like

a Navalny volunteer, or like

someone you could trust the moment

you first saw him? But the police version

sounds exactly like this: that this

man here,

who has, I think, three prior convictions and

has a certificate stating that he has

a mental disorder and is registered with a

neuropsychiatric clinic, came from Leningrad

Region to Moscow. In Leningrad Region

he heard that he could earn some extra money

by becoming a Navalny volunteer, so he came to

Moscow,

learned that there was a certain Nikolai Lyaskin—he

called him Alexei Lyaskin in this

video—approached him at headquarters and said,

'Listen, Lyaskin, I'm this kind of

guy from Leningrad Region. Look,

I've come here, I need to make some extra

money.' And Lyaskin tells him,

'You've come to the right place. Here's

a photo of me, and here are photos of

another person. Please stage

an attack on us by hitting us on the head, and

I'll pay you 150,000 rubles (about $2,500 at the time) for it.'

'Okay, deal.' Well, he gave him about 10

thousand rubles (about $170 at the time) up front, and then this happened. After that

he hits Lyaskin on the head

and sends him a text message on his phone.

with the word "Done"

and they want people to believe it, they

want us to believe it, and they

A huge number of people should not be underestimated here

— that’s how television works.

Because people don’t know the context.

They don’t understand anything; you just show them

a report on NTV (a Russian state-aligned TV channel) saying, “Wow,”

“there’s been an exposé — it turns out a certain

Lyaskin

ordered an attack on himself.” People

watch that and say, “Well, that explains what our

opposition is like. Right, that’s how they operate.”

“Good, great, the police solved the whole thing.”

And of course this second part of this

farcical spectacle with

this man’s “shocking confessions”

of course shows that there was

a plan behind it from the very beginning, and that

unfortunately points directly to the fact that

this is not just some kind of provocation at the level of

I don’t know, the Nashi movement (a pro-Kremlin youth movement) or

just some random lunatics. This is not

some police initiative — it is specifically

a provocation organized

by the Presidential Administration, because

from the start the idea was to bring in the media,

to find some person,

send him to the campaign headquarters so he could speak with

Lyaskin, after which Lyaskin would be struck on the

head, and the next day they would claim that

the attack on him had been staged, and

basically there are two possibilities:

either one of their people hit Lyaskin on the

head and they’re now covering for him by simply

grabbing some

guy and forcing him to say something,

or else they sent him there from the start. I think

that’s what happened.

I think the next stage of events will be

as follows: right now they are using

this for a media offensive, in order

to

simply discredit

Lyaskin and the whole campaign, and they’ll keep dragging

his name through the mud — they already are, with various, uh,

Kremlin media outlets, political scientists,

and analysts explaining how these

opposition figures, you know, attack

themselves. Then, under that cover, they’ll

organize other attacks and

say, “Well, obviously, this attack

was staged — they attack themselves,”

that’s what they do.

Every time someone there — God forbid —

gets hit on the head or

someone gets pelted with eggs, they’ll say, “Well,

obviously. That’s how they get publicity.” The situation

will supposedly have “shown” that they pay money

to have eggs thrown at them, for

having brilliant green antiseptic splashed in their eyes, or

even acid — that they pay for all of it themselves. And

that’s what they’ll use afterward. Then

this man — they don’t

want him to end up in court, because

in court he’d be asked questions like: where did you

talk to him?

Where exactly? And if it was in some café,

there must be surveillance footage left.

And how did he give you 10,000 rubles? Where is that

10,000 rubles? Well, judging by

the way the man spoke, saying he came

to work at Alexei Lyaskin’s headquarters, he couldn’t

possibly answer — he won’t be able to

answer those questions. So my assumption is that they’ll

now send him for

evaluation — he was registered at a psychoneurological dispensary (a state mental health clinic), after all.

They’ll send him for a psychological

and psychiatric evaluation at

the Serbsky Institute (Russia’s main state forensic psychiatry center) for, uh, two

or three months, and he’ll disappear there, and then

gradually they’ll relieve him of

criminal liability, saying that, well,

Jones is insane, he cannot be held

criminally responsible, and then he’ll

go back somewhere to Leningrad Region

and be out of sight. And the whole case will gradually

fall apart, disintegrate — but during

all that time

they’ll keep going after Lyaskin, they’ll keep

telling everyone what horrible people we

are, ordering attacks on

ourselves. And, uh, this is not just a media

provocation — don’t forget, it’s a media provocation

involving a steel pipe with which

a man was struck on the head. Just consider

the kind of people we’re dealing with.

Consider what these officials are planning.

Some Kiriyenko (Sergei Kiriyenko, a senior Kremlin official) or his deputies are sitting there and

they are actually planning this

combination: “Let’s have this guy

hit that one on the head, and then they’ll say…”

There is not the slightest doubt that this was

organized by officials, because, well,

to make the police participate in

this lie, and to make the mass

media cover all of it,

to take these recordings from the police — the interrogation

recordings — put them out there, show all these

people — well, of course, uh, of course that indicates

that this was happening at a high level. And

however ridiculous all of this is, it still

will not be an obstacle

to using it in

propaganda. By the way, uh, I can see

people are asking me

about the text message. When Kolya was still in the hospital,

they had done an MRI, and that night he already

wrote to me, “Listen,” and sent me a screenshot of this

text message, saying, “Some weird crap — look,”

“I discovered that I got a text message with the word

‘Done.’ It all looks very strange.”

Well, theoretically one could assume that

the attacker mixed up the phones and sent the

text message to me, but

it looks bizarre. I told him, “You’re at the

police station — show them that text message, show it to them right away,” and

he showed it to them and handed it over that same night.

the police officers. And now, so, he is being

told that he ordered all of this, and here

is the proof that this was your order —

the fact that one of the attackers sent you a text message.

As far as I understand, as far as I’ve

spoken with Lyaskin, this person came

to the campaign office; he spoke with him once

in the presence of about 15 witnesses there at the office. Well,

anyone can come into the campaign office and

say, “Hello, I’m a volunteer. I want to

work here with you.” He appears in some

photographs; he came by several times.

After that, the office on Lesnaya Street never

spoke with him without witnesses,

as far as I understand. In general,

it’s difficult, almost impossible, to imagine, you know,

that even if someone wanted

to organize such a provocation and stage

some kind of rehearsal attack — well,

it’s unlikely that you would place that kind of trust in the first

random person, someone who looks like an alcoholic

and a repeat offender, and become so trusting

that you would ask him to carry out

an attack staged against yourselves. Nevertheless,

that is what’s happening. Vladimir Ilyin writes:

“Congratulations to Lyaskin, let’s give him likes.” And

why congratulate Lyaskin? He’s still sitting there

under a travel restriction (a pledge not to leave), that is, we’re

congratulating him because he wasn’t jailed, and

uh, after being hit on the head, the man ended up

with this hanging over him — uh, right now he’s

under some kind of restriction on leaving,

and they may even tighten it further or put him under house arrest. He

has been stuck there for three straight days without leaving

the police station, where no

investigative actions are being carried out with him; he’s

just sitting there. So it’s too early, uh,

to congratulate him. Natalya Prokopchik: “A terrible

act of meanness in Lyaskin’s case. Stay strong.”

A terrible act of meanness, uh.

Lena Oreshkina: “Shameful, brazen

behavior, absolutely. These people are

cynical scoundrels, and they should be treated

no other way.” GSRG says: “Alexei,

check all volunteers for prior

convictions and psychiatric registration.” How do you

imagine that? We currently have 160,000

volunteers, and there is no database — no legal database exists

where you can check whether you

or I have a criminal record, drug registration,

or any other official registration. It’s impossible, even

if we wanted to. Our offices

operate as election campaign

headquarters, which obviously means that

anyone can come in,

put on a T-shirt that says “Navalny 2018,”

take pictures with all the volunteers,

come up and take a picture with me, and

then go hit someone on the

head with a pipe and say, “Here’s a photo of me

with Navalny, here’s a photo of me at the campaign office, and

they’re the ones who ordered me to do all this.” Well,

that’s how our campaign is structured. We are running

a real campaign, and it is open; it

rules out the idea that we would be checking

these people. We don’t have that capability, and

we don’t have that desire either. But we understand

perfectly well that despite the fact that

99% are normal, honest, sincere people,

there is still 1% of crooks who can easily be

sent in to infiltrate us, very easily infiltrate us.

Ekaterina Vasilchenko sends thanks,

offers support, and writes: “See you tomorrow

in Novosibirsk.” Come to Novosibirsk —

tomorrow it will be

+8°C and rainy, so please come

so I’m not standing there alone. Here,

at this wonderful — what’s it called —

the city park…

the event starts...

They write an interesting thing. Returning to

teachers: you talk about teachers as

traitors, but have you considered that they could

simply be thrown out of their jobs

for refusing? You can understand them, can’t you?

So far, we still don’t know of precedents where they

were fired for this. Well, let’s

be honest about it. I mean, I am far

from the idea that we should imprison

or shoot hundreds of thousands of Russian

teachers who take part in election fraud

at every election, all the time.

But no one is literally forcing them every time.

You can leave, you can take a day off, you

can take sick leave, you can simply

say, “I don’t want to participate in this,” and

“do it without me.” But they do participate because

either they are weak-willed,

spineless, or because of time off

or because they are paid some money

for serving on election commissions now. So

I understand the difficulty of their situation, but

I refuse to sympathize with them. This is,

you know, not Stalin’s time.

And nowadays, it’s not as though they can simply be fired

for this. If you want to refuse and not take part

in falsifications, then refuse and don’t take part.

That is precisely why there are schools in Moscow where

principals say, “No, in my school

nothing like that will happen,” and it does not

happen there. And there are schools that say,

“All right, just write down what

you want us to do, and we’ll do it.” It is always a choice,

the choice of a specific individual. So,

updated results on Sobchak: on

Twitter, 12% of people say that she

represents their interests.

88% do not see her as their candidate.

On VKontakte, 6.5% of respondents say

that Sobchak represents their interests; 93%

say no.

Where are the famous 86%? They’re not writing to Nemagiya (a Russian YouTube channel).

Alexei Kreiter asks: “So what’s happening there?”

Nothing new is happening, as far as

I understand. Nemagiya,

one of Nemagiya’s participants was questioned

in Moscow; they were all intimidated there. Khovansky,

that blogger who also...

some fairly harsh videos against Tinkov

I recorded them, but was forced to take them down. Well,

that is,

people are afraid of this. We’re not scared. I can

say it plainly, and I said everything

I think about Tinkov, because first of all

I’m a lawyer; second, I’m simply used to

this; third, I’ve got a whole bunch of

lawyers sitting here who

can help me if anything happens. But a person who

just found themselves in a situation where people rush in,

saw the door open, smash it down, and then

all sorts of lawyers with folders come in and start

feeding them nonsense: “Protokon will sue you,”

“they’ll ruin you financially.” Of course people get scared, and in that

sense, unfortunately, Tinkov

has completely lost morally, and

from a PR standpoint he has completely lost in this

situation. But organizationally and legally

he has, of course, managed to silence these people

to everyone’s great regret.

Bomb threats—I wanted to say a couple of words

about what is happening, what continues

to happen: bomb threats in Russian

cities. The topic is not making it onto

the federal TV channels at all, but nevertheless it is

an absolutely massive phenomenon. On September 17,

nine cities, 48 buildings.

On September 18, 47 incidents in Moscow alone.

On September 19, 20 major cities. That is,

on September 21, today, there are 12

buildings in Moscow under bomb threat, and

the State Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament) is already saying that the damage from these

so-called “bombings” has amounted to no

less than 1 billion rubles (about US$17 million at the time). I think it is

higher. After all, there have been hundreds of thousands of evacuees.

Just imagine how much revenue is lost by

a large shopping mall that

is evacuated for the entire day, how much revenue

transport facilities lose,

the damage has been colossal. And what

is most infuriating in this situation

—what I want to say—is: where is

our SORM system, what is it called,

the system

for operational investigative activities? That is the

very thing,

those “black boxes” installed at every

internet provider, every telephone company,

everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. Billions and billions

of Russian taxpayers’ money have been spent

on it. The Russian police

and the FSB (Russia’s security service) can listen to and record

every phone call. It is very

easy for them to do—practically elementary.

They do it without a court order; they force

providers to buy this equipment, and

so what?

And it turns out that with nothing more than

telephone terrorism, you can literally

terrorize

the entire country, inflict damage worth

billions of rubles, and nothing will happen

and it is impossible to prevent it,

impossible to find these people using some kind of

super technology, identify

their voices and isolate them. But when it comes time

to fight rallies and protests, they claim they have

super-equipment that will find

all of you, the police will decode everything and enter it

into databases. But with telephone terrorists, why

can’t you do that? That’s the question.

Why are we paying to maintain this whole system, why

are we maintaining these departments, whatever

they’re called—Department K, I think, in the Interior Ministry,

that deal with cybersecurity?

What are the enormous FSB services for? Total,

absolute incompetence. That is what

characterizes the behavior of our

special services in this situation with this telephone

terrorism, which fortunately has not yet led

to human casualties, but has caused

extremely serious, very serious damage to the

country’s economy.

Alexei asks me, Gryphon,

“Please comment on the situation with Binbank.”

I’ll comment on it now.

And this is not only about

Binbank. This is really a question about the banking

system of our country. Just like with telephone

terrorism, you see, which I was

just talking about—we spent an enormous

amount of money creating a system of

security, it has devoured the whole country. More than

a third of our budget goes to military and police spending,

and when it is supposed

to work and protect us from telephone

terrorists—zero effect. The same

situation exists with the banking system. So, the Central Bank

announced a bailout of Binbank—it is the 12th-largest

bank in the country. Quite recently they

also announced a bailout of Otkritie Bank. That means

that over the past couple of weeks

it has emerged that two of the country’s largest banks

have effectively gone bankrupt, and that they

were conducting their

business operations completely improperly.

They were running them badly,

stupidly, for many months, and

the Central Bank did not notice. And on the

Central Bank’s board of directors,

nearly half the people are involved

in so-called banking supervision,

and this is a total failure of banking supervision.

What are all these people with enormous

salaries doing? What is Elvira

Nabiullina doing, and why is she constantly

being placed on all these lists and rankings as

the best central banker in the world? Where

is this banking supervision? Your biggest

banks

are now saying, “Oh, you know,

we ran the business badly, we didn’t account for the risks,

we bought all this stuff left and

right for nothing, we shouldn’t have bailed out

smaller banks.” And then, as in the well-known joke,

“and then I went bankrupt.” And

now we need trillions without

without exaggeration, spend a trillion on

saving these, these banks and these

bankers. Here is the question I want

to put to a vote.

On VKontakte (a Russian social network) and Twitter: should

failed bankers lose their fortunes?

fortunes? This is an important thing, after all.

The Central Bank is saving the banks and saving these bankers.

We do not see them being arrested or

crying; they are billionaires and

multimillionaires, and their personal fortunes

are being preserved. And who will get all this

property? That is, how did banking supervision

look at all this? For example,

Binbank bought up all the five-star

hotels in Moscow. They were buying them left and right,

probably, generally speaking, without having

any experience managing a chain of

hotels. They were simply investing money;

they were chaotically buying up everything around them.

And now it turns out that the personal wealth

of these people will, one way or another, be preserved. So

let's vote: should these

bankers, who are now, well, rather

sadly saying, "We failed to cope with

market realities"—should these bankers

also become poor, or at least no longer

be rich people? Because because of them

clients will suffer, and we will pay for their mistakes

because it is our money that the Central Bank

will spend on the bailout, because it is with our

money that all these

banks will be nationalized, because we are the ones who will suffer from

the fact that there will be less competition in the

banking sector, and we will have to pay for all of this.

Well, shouldn't these bankers

also become, well, ordinary citizens and

go get a job somewhere, earning a salary—

I don't know, even a large one, 200,000 rubles a month (about 200,000 RUB), but

still with limits? They probably should

have their ten-room apartments taken away, their

villas, their yachts. Probably that is how this should

work: if they came to us, to the

Central Bank, to the Russian state, to us

and said, "Guys, there's a hole in the bank's balance sheet,

so

please somehow cover this hole for us."

What did Binbank do? It effectively

raised money in the pension market

from around 4 million people. They

were collecting money through their own

private pension fund, and with this

pension money they were financing for themselves

this beautiful life: we'll buy this

hotel, we'll buy that hotel, and over here

a five-star, a six-star,

a ten-star hotel—we'll buy everything.

And we will beautifully advertise on billboards and on our

websites how all the

five-star hotels belong to us.

A cool, beautiful life—that's very nice.

And all of it sparkles and glitters,

but it ended with the fact that we now have

to pay hundreds of billions of rubles for

it. I would like these bankers

to share with all of us the burden

of their failed business. That is number

one. And I would also like the people from

banking supervision who slept through

this, who were participants in all of this—

every bank files reports twice a day,

twice a day, and of course banking

supervision at the Central Bank could not have failed to know that Otkritie

had been heading toward catastrophe for months, and that Binbank

had been heading toward catastrophe for months. These people from the

Central Bank—should they

share

with us some kind of

responsibility? For example, should they be fired

from their jobs? For example, should they be stripped of

their huge salaries and bonuses? For example, they should not

be given official apartments, and

their big black cars should be taken away.

Let them ride the metro. They worked

badly, they failed, but that, unfortunately,

does not happen. Please vote.

Meanwhile, I am being told that Zhdanov, our

lawyer, reports about the alleged attacker of

Lyaskin.

His status is unclear. Forty-eight hours have passed,

but there has been no court hearing on his arrest. This is

exactly what I was saying: they do not want him

to end up in court, because in court

there should be an open hearing, right?

Journalists would probably ask him questions,

because in court he would have to

answer certain questions.

Investigators, lawyers—some kind of

outline of the charges would have to be stated. Now

it will turn out that either the hearing has already taken place and it was

some kind of secret one, or they decided before

trial to send him to a psychiatric hospital. Well, that is my

prediction. I may be wrong, but it seems to me

that after he fulfilled

his function and went on television to say

that, supposedly, Lyaskin organized

the attack on himself, he will somehow

gradually, uh, gradually disappear somewhere.

Grigory from Manhattan says: "I know one

teacher who stuffs ballots for United Russia and considers

Alexei a criminal." That is the kind of picture

that exists. Well, yes, that is probably

already a clinical case, when

a person stuffs ballots for United Russia but considers

me a criminal—that is, of course, already

close to pathology, but

this tradition of hypocrisy in our country

leads to the fact that many people

simply come to live with this idea, and it seems to me

that while they are stuffing ballots, while they are

committing a crime, they think that in this way

they are also defending the Motherland, because

you have to protect it from some kind of—these people,

they went and voted however they liked, on their own,

you cannot allow them to vote

the way they want. I have to stuff ballots, and by doing so

help—help our Motherland. Should

failed bankers lose their fortunes?

The results are the same for us and on Twitter as well.

And on VKontakte too. Yes: 90%, no: 10%. My question is

to that 10%: why do you

love these failed bankers so much? Well,

all right.

Uh, well, if they worked, if they were

businessmen, they took certain risks, they

made some deals with the Central Bank, and

it didn’t work out for them, they went bankrupt, and we

are supposed to pay their debts—and you want them to

keep their fancy yachts and fancy houses?

But no one is saying they should

end up destitute or beg for alms in the metro. Well,

surely a significant part of their personal

fortunes—it would be logical if they

lost them. But still, here 10% think

they should not lose them, while 90% think

that, after all, they should.

started NG

In the future, do you plan

to remove teachers from the process of organizing

elections? Absolutely. Teachers should not

be doing this at all. This should be handled

by commissions; it should be handled

by representatives of the candidates. In

normal elections, there will always be

candidate representatives. We should, and

we can, use school buildings for

organizing the electoral process, but

those are still polling stations. But

why force teachers to be members of

election commissions? That’s simply

idiotic. There will be no teachers there,

no doctors there, no

housing maintenance office employees (ZhEK, municipal housing services) there. This is all a matter for

the election participants, observers, people

who are interested in the political process.

They should organize all of this in such a way

that they can see the honesty and

transparency of it all and be

convinced of it.

Konstantin Molin asks: it’s strange,

why are teachers opposed to

Navalny? It’s this government that mistreats them—he comes,

pays them next to nothing, shows them no respect, drags them to

rallies and then forces them to elections.

They are not against me—that’s a big

misconception. But still,

why, for example, did this video

with audio of this kind of interrogation of a

schoolboy from Vladivostok get such

a reaction? Because, fortunately,

it is still an isolated case. But this is what happens

when, as the saying goes, if you make a fool pray to God,

he’ll smash his own forehead. That’s how some

teachers act. But the majority, by and large,

are perfectly normal in their attitude; there is

no negativity. Of course, they are often

simply more susceptible—well, more

easily influenced by state propaganda. But

it is absolutely wrong to think that

they are all directly against us and

ready to defend this regime. It’s just that many

of them do not believe that it is possible—uh, possible

for things to change for the better. Vladimir Sancho writes

that he found a Navalny 2018 badge, and wears it to

work and to the store, with stickers on his bag.

That is absolutely the right approach.

You can campaign, and you should campaign,

using whatever methods are available. It may seem to you

that no one notices a badge, but lots of people do notice it,

and it really is

a means of campaigning. So

take part in all of this.

But is it really hard to be

Nabiullina in a country where there is Zhirinovsky

with his talk of a 30-kopek ruble and so on?

You have to admit, I wouldn’t want to be

Nabiullina. Well, listen, it’s not hard to be

Nabiullina—being anyone is hard. Is it not hard to be a school

teacher? Is it not hard to be me?

Or Alexei? What, is anyone’s life easy? Come on.

Let’s feel sorry for Nabiullina because

she’s supposedly the one who suffers most. There’s

Zhirinovsky pressuring her with his 30-kopek ruble nonsense.

The head of any central bank

in any country is a person who lives under

constant stress, under pressure from

different political forces and different

schools of economic thought. Some want tight

monetary policy; others want to hand out loans

to everyone. If you don’t want that, then don’t go into

the Central Bank. So Nabiullina—

I assure you—is a very highly paid

person. She will leave the Central Bank,

and she will be a millionaire, while you will not.

You understand, she failed at banking

supervision, and she will still be a very, very rich

person who, after leaving public service,

will spend many years sitting

—unless, of course, we come to power. When

we come to power, we will not allow that—

she’ll be sitting on the boards of directors of all kinds of

companies, importantly adjusting her glasses

and pontificating, talking about what a

great banking expert she is.

Feel sorry for yourself, not for Elvira Nabiullina.

She really should not be pitied at all. I

would vote for Sobchak, Medvedev writes,

Evgeny—but only after two Navalny terms,

that is,

in 2028. Well, that would be a normal

option, but I’m not sure that I would, uh—

that is, after two terms, support

Ksyusha (diminutive of Ksenia Sobchak) in the election, because once again, her

political views are really not very

pleasant. She may be a nice, likable person, but what she

says is downright barbaric.

RBC says the Council of Europe is calling on

the Russian authorities to allow Alexei

Navalny to take part in the elections. I haven’t seen that

news yet; apparently it has just come out, and

it is probably connected with

the review, because the Council of

Europe was considering the question of how

Russia is implementing the ruling of the European

Court in the Kirovles case, and they were supposed

to review it yesterday, and today

They were supposed to say what had actually happened there.

So I don't know what happened.

But from this RBC (a Russian business media outlet) headline that was sent to me,

which people are posting here in the comments, I

can see that, well, apparently they admitted that

they admitted the obvious: that Russia is not

complying with the ruling of the European Court

of Human Rights. We have two completely separate topics.

Let me say briefly: the Ministry of

Defense—I just wanted to note this. Let's

watch this very short video about

a helicopter firing. Can we show it?

Do we have that video?

[applause]

Well, fortunately no one was killed, though there are

people who were injured. But something like this can happen

during military exercises involving thousands of people and equipment—someone pressed

the wrong button, something happened, a shot was fired.

The question is: why are you lying, you scoundrels? Here is

the statement from the Ministry of Defense.

The sequence of statements

from the Ministry of Defense was that they said

it never happened, that it was made up by some

ill-intentioned people, that only a

madman could even think of such a thing—while by then

YouTube was already full of all kinds of

videos about it. Everyone knew that as a result of

some kind of mistake, this shot had been

fired, but the Ministry of Defense

kept lying right up to the very last moment, and then

it was simply forced to admit that

it was an accidental missile launch. But

first they said that this video was from

a different time. What I want to say is simply

one thing: unfortunately, sadly,

the Russian Ministry of Defense always lies.

In any situation, it just

lies endlessly and constantly. When they lie

about military operations—well, like when

in Syria they supposedly bombed 100,000

targets, and every missile that didn't go astray

supposedly hit a rebel headquarters—

that's normal enough; all armies in the world always

lie, that's part of war. But when they

lie endlessly about events like this, that is

disgusting—very, very unpleasant.

Shame on you, Ministry of Defense. The last

topic—good Lord, I've already gone over time—is the uprising

of migrants. Still, I will say this.

Uh,

What happened just now in the southeast

of Moscow, not far from my home in Maryino,

I was simply watching it all there—

there really were migrant riots.

And it's a pretty frightening thing, because

well, I live there, and I really saw that

the Moscow mayor's office, in effect the Russian government,

has created a ghetto—a monstrous ghetto—

where a huge number of migrants

have absolutely no rights, and they

constantly push propaganda about how

everything is terrible in Europe, and they think that here

nothing like that could ever explode.

Let's briefly watch this video of what

is happening there.

Bye, bye.

I'm already out of time, so I won't

show more clips where you can simply hear

gunfire, where they are storming this

little booth where the security guards are sitting.

It all looks terrifying. Judging by

everything, the situation really was that

the shopping mall's security guards beat

one of the migrants, almost killed him,

and threw him out into the street somewhere

half-dead. And as a result, they really got

an uprising. Right now they are being arrested

by the hundreds. But guys, you need to think about

the fact that

situations like this will inevitably

keep happening, and they will happen

more and more often. This is a direct consequence

of the policy of the Russian Federation; it is a direct

consequence of the visa-free regime, which on the

one hand creates a huge

number of migrants, and on the other hand

creates their total lack of rights. But they

are here in the position of slaves, and indeed

people think they can be treated that way. I mean, what are we

even talking about? He was beaten half to death—call a hospital?

Really?

Ridiculous. They threw him over the fence, and that was it.

What are they going to do to us? There are

hundreds of thousands of them here, and the next generation of these

migrants, who are growing up and whom our

children will encounter, will be people who

will be Uzbek or Tajik by

ethnicity, but they were born here already,

they know no other language, and they

will naturally believe that they have

every right to speak up—and they will indeed have

every right to demand things, and they

will behave far more boldly

than those you just saw in the

video. And the measure I am proposing—

a visa regime with the countries of Central Asia—

is exactly the right one, because on the one

hand there will be fewer migrants, and on the other

hand we will give them certain rights: there will be

work permits, they will have

medical insurance, and it will be impossible

to treat them the way they are treated

now—as slaves.

Therefore,

if you support the introduction of a visa regime

with the countries of Central Asia, support

my candidacy, because I am the

only candidate running in the

election who is saying that he will introduce

a visa regime with the countries of Central Asia, because

all the others are cowardly keeping

silent about it.

In closing, I want once again to thank

those who came to my rallies and meetings

last weekend. This weekend I will be

in Novosibirsk, Vladivostok, and Khabarovsk.

Come to the meeting. After that, we will

travel to cities across the country; we will continue

a real election campaign. I am ready

to answer your questions—pleasant ones,

unpleasant ones, tough ones and not-so-tough ones. That is

my job as a candidate, and I will do it.

Thank you very much. See you next

week.

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