Putin’s daughter’s dissertation, the government’s falling approval ratings, and the TV series "Chernobyl"

[music]

Good evening, everyone. In Moscow, it is exactly 8:00 p.m.

That means that, here in the studio, as

usual on Thursdays, I am Alexei Navalny

or, as someone trying to hype himself up over

Crimea, as the online outlet

*Sevastopol Privet* called me. Greetings to Sevastopol, and to everyone in

the online media outlets that, as it turns out,

watch our program closely.

Please send me your questions with the hashtag

on Twitter, with the hashtag #RussiaOfTheFuture, and I

will try, over the course of the program, to answer your

questions, as I always do.

Of course, the main topic being discussed today

and yesterday

is the large number of opinion polls

that suddenly came out and showed us

that Putin’s ratings have fallen to record

lows. The most astonishing thing about

this—truly astonishing—is that

state-run polling services

are putting out the most—not exactly

apocalyptic, of course—but still

plainly bad numbers for Putin. We basically have

three polling services in this country.

There’s the Levada Center,

which is considered sort of oppositional, meaning

independent: it says things as they are, and

that’s why it’s treated as oppositional. There’s FOM,

which is generally state-aligned, but still

tries to present itself as independent. And there’s VTsIOM,

which usually just churns out

all kinds of pro-government

nonsense, manipulates data—the most

hardcore

pro-Putin polling service of them all. And

this VTsIOM has now repeatedly stated that

Putin’s ratings are falling, and the ratings of

United Russia are falling too. A couple of days ago, they

literally came out with the headline

“An Unprecedented Decline in the Ratings of

Vladimir Putin.” They announced that

his rating had dropped to 31 percent. That is

absolutely—you can see the table on screen now—

the lowest figure in recent

years. And if we look at it

by region,

Putin’s lowest rating is in

Magadan Region, where it is only

even lower. Which is understandable, really, because

the Russian Far East

has simply been abandoned. As for Magadan Region,

what is there to say? Life there is hard, people

are leaving, there are no prospects whatsoever,

and people in Magadan Region have stopped loving Vladimir Putin.

He ought to go there, to Magadan Region,

and whether he ends up staying there somehow or not

is for him to decide. But in

Magadan Region, they have fallen out of love with Putin.

They have fallen out of love with the United Russia party as well. The average

electoral rating nationwide is 34

percent; in Khabarovsk Krai, it is just 21

percent. Once again, we see that in the Far East

people do not like the authorities. And, in fact,

that is exactly what the idea of our

Smart Voting is built on: the authorities’ ratings

have now fallen so low that if we—

those of us watching this program, along with our

friends and acquaintances—literally,

without exaggeration, turn out for

the elections on September 8, then we will seriously reduce

United Russia’s result. So,

guys, Smart Voting. And so, what happened was

something completely interesting:

these state polling

services are simply no longer able

to hide the fact that Putin’s rating is dropping sharply.

They release some data, and

then the Kremlin starts to worry. And today, very

amusingly, Peskov said that

the Kremlin wants sociologists to come in and

explain why Vladimir Putin’s rating

is falling. And I hope the sociologists

come in and say: guys, your rating

is falling because you don’t do a damn thing,

you just steal, you’ve been in power for 20 years,

and the people are getting poorer.

The ratings are falling for a very simple reason:

for the past five years,

your salary has either been shrinking or standing

still, while prices in the stores keep rising. That’s all.

And that is exactly what the decline in

the ratings is tied to, and it will continue. Sorry,

sorry, guys, I’m not going to give you any false hope on that front.

Your salary

in the coming years

will stay roughly as it is, or grow only

a little, while prices in the stores

will rise much faster. So

I assume that the viewers of this program—

among them, Putin’s rating is already fairly

low—but more and more people

will come around to this kind of

dissatisfaction: the simplest, most everyday kind.

Not even necessarily about corruption or

not corruption, or poor governance of the country,

the West, war, Crimea or not Crimea—just

that the economy is getting worse, the country is being run

badly, nothing is happening, and we

are slowly getting poorer—or at least

remaining stuck at the same level,

while the rest of the world is growing a little. And

staying at the same level while prices

keep rising means that you are gradually

becoming poorer. And connected to this is an amazing

video I saw this week.

It was exactly the kind of protest you get from people

who never go to rallies of any kind.

They were opening Dynamo Stadium, and there came

Deputy Prime Minister Golodets,

who oversaw

healthcare, by the way—a fairly

close associate of Putin. She was involved in

healthcare, which is obviously an important area.

She was in the Moscow city government; she is

a rather wealthy lady, with homes in

Italy and Switzerland—in other words, one of those

important Putin people. Now she

She oversees culture and sports, and she came to

Dynamo Stadium to say

how much everything around has improved.

In connection with Vladimir Vladimirov, Sergei

Simeonov. Look, guys,

a government official, a member of the government,

built you a new stadium, so rejoice.

Bow your heads in gratitude.

But she understands that people came there for

the opening of Dynamo Stadium. It is generally believed that

hardcore

football fans who go to stadiums

tend to like the authorities

a little more than the average person, and

so Golodets basically came to collect

her applause, as she and

Putin's government expected.

Let's watch a few seconds of how

it looked in practice. At the same time,

no one in the stadium actually knows

who Golodets is. I think even you

may have barely caught the surname — what the hell kind of

government lady is this? People

were simply reacting to the words

"government" and "Golodets" at the stadium.

Deputy Prime Minister

of the Russian Federation

Olga Golodets

People come out.

[music]

2

She's still all like, no—

my people around the city.

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markers

there are no themes

[music]

friends

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And Olga Golodets had to deliver

her pompous speech through all that

jeering. It was genuinely massive — not just

a little bit of whistling here and there, no, it was really

the whole stadium. I can't say exactly

what the capacity of this

Dynamo stadium is, but obviously tens of thousands of people

were jeering and shouting, and you can make out

how she pushes through with this: "I am glad that

in our country

we have returned this stadium..." In other words, this whole

very

Putin-style thing: we have once again given you back

something, so please rejoice. But people

do not want to rejoice. People

are jeering, and in that jeering there is a completely

clear message: hey,

we sold trillions of dollars' worth of oil and gas

over the past decades; 20

or 30 stadiums like this should have been built.

So get out of here with

your government. And it is very important

that, generally speaking, these rather apolitical

people are saying this.

And what does this look like, my dear YouTube

viewers?

Let's also take a look at our

northern capital (St. Petersburg),

at Petrovsky Stadium some time

ago — there was a very similar incident. Let's

St. Petersburg.

[applause]

[applause]

[applause]

except

for me.

Of course, this is a fairly legendary

recording of how the then-governor,

Poltavchenko, came to the stadium

shortly after calling the residents

of St. Petersburg "zhlobs" (a derogatory term meaning boors or louts) because they

were doing something he did not like, and

Zenit fans and everyone else who had gathered

there — as soon as he appeared,

they realized he had come and started chanting

all together: "Governor is a boor!" And what else like that was there? Let's

remember — let's take a look.

About our sun-like leader, or whatever one is now

supposed to say these days,

say.

the "fairytale one" — there was a similar

incident with him too at the Olimpiyskiy Stadium.

Vladimir Putin and the fans.

So, friends,

today all fans of martial arts

[applause]

and this celebration took place in the open

air...

you six hundred...

many thanks to them.

Remember, this was 2011. Putin came to

the stadium in order to

show off; elections were coming up soon — parliamentary and presidential — and

he began

to speak, and the entire stadium started booing and whistling. And then it was very

interesting to watch later when

Peskov said that of course they were not booing Putin,

they were booing

fighter Monson — Jeff Monson — who,

incidentally, is now a deputy in

the Krasnogorsk district. So it wasn't Putin

they were booing, but that fighter.

But everyone understood perfectly well that back in 2011

the authorities had become so unbearable to everyone that

it was Putin they were booing. After that, Putin and

his circle put a lot of effort into

raising their approval ratings. They

resorted to the most, the single most powerful

tool that a leader of that kind

an authoritarian leader can use to

boost his ratings: they started a war.

And we were all told that any moment now

these terrible [__] would of course eat our children,

and they crucify little boys, and they

are destroying the Russian language, and in general, any minute now

NATO troops would be stationed in Kyiv.

And naturally they whipped the whole country up.

The whole country was in hysterics. You

split into several camps, and we...

For several years in a row, the entire political agenda

was all about Crimea — is it ours or not, and that story about a boy supposedly being crucified there

— no boys were crucified, of course, but TV talk shows still

go on about it endlessly. But now,

in 2019, we can see how all of that

has stopped working, because people

have started looking into their own pockets.

They pulled out their wallets — my wallet, by the way, I

bought in our store,

our online shop — they looked inside, and there

was less and less and less money. And that

works more powerfully now than Vladimir

Solovyov and Dmitry Kiselyov (pro-Kremlin TV hosts), with their endless

rehashing of Ukraine, Crimea, Zelenskyy,

Poroshenko, Merkel, Trump, and so on.

People do not want to hear that. They want

the oil, gas, metals — whatever it is — that we

pull out of our land

and sell to the West to make us at least a little

better off, or for the government's efforts

in managing the economy

to make us a little richer. Because, well,

it’s absurd: we think we’re so

great, we puff ourselves up,

but in Estonia the average salary is higher than

ours. In Eastern European countries,

pensions are already much higher everywhere than

ours, and here they still have to raise

the retirement age

just to somehow catch up with someone, to plug

holes in the budget. And we all

understand who is actually responsible for those holes

in the budget. In short, the ratings are falling. This is very

important. We should expect that, of course,

the authorities will also try in the near future

to do something extraordinary, because

back then there was booing,

then there was defeat in the elections, and they

falsified the vote. Once again: Smart Voting,

come out and vote against

United Russia.

Albert asks: from New York, it looks like what difference

does the rating make? They’ll still

count the votes however they want. But of course, no,

Albert, that’s not quite true. Fraud

is possible, but its scale is also

limited across the country. In Bashkortostan

or in Chechnya, they can throw in as many votes as they like,

but in Moscow and St. Petersburg, still,

it’s not quite like that. Besides, you see, one

thing is this:

when turnout is 60 percent, as it was in the

presidential election, and those people vote

so that 73 percent comes out of that 60,

but it’s another matter when turnout in an election

is low — 20 percent — and of that 20 percent,

only 20 percent voted for United Russia.

They have to inflate that into a big number,

and that is not even technically so

easy to do. Besides, we will

monitor the vote, we will make

video recordings.

In 2011, as you remember, they

stuffed ballots and cheated. And how did that

end? It ended with fairly

mass protests, and then for another

year and a half it remained the main

political issue. So they are in a

difficult position. But besides that, there is also

this point: fine, maybe they counted the election

the way they wanted, but beyond elections there is also

such a thing as practical public support.

Before, as various crooks used to say

during presidential

elections: never mind whether they falsified

the results or not, you still understood that

the majority would come and vote

for Putin. And many people said: yes,

we understood that. But now it’s exactly the opposite.

Conceptually, you and I, Albert, understand that

United Russia is not in first place, and

Putin’s rating is already down to 31, then it will be

21, then 25 — who even knows. But of course, that does not mean

we should doubt that they will once again

try to cook up something like that.

To raise their ratings,

and since within the economy they can do

nothing, they will be forced to

stage something

of that sort.

And while they are figuring out what to stage, they

will of course try to silence everyone

who spreads videos like that one with the booing,

those who say anything

about the authorities, those who write about them on fences, and

legally, of course, the funniest

and most astonishing thing — well, “funniest” thing — is this:

Leonid Volkov, who is currently under

arrest. Which is not very funny, of course, but still,

something extraordinary has happened.

Volkov is under

arrest over a rally, and in order to pin

something else on him, they

found his tweet with that phrase. Let’s

show this tweet without any censorship, but

honestly, it’s not that I’m afraid

to say it — I already say plenty of things

on my Twitter — but I just do not

really want to use any

very uncensored language here. Still,

you can see this tweet without any censorship.

It is simply about a verdict and a

YouTube video that is posted online.

It is a verdict: a judge is reading out the sentence, and

this tweet was deemed an insult to

the authorities, and Volkov is going to be tried. They are trying

to classify this as insulting the authorities,

because next time, for a tweet like that,

they will be able to jail someone, and so on and so forth.

So you can see how painfully they

react, simply trying

to shut people up.

It would seem: Twitter, the internet — why

pay attention to that? What matters to them is

television, the big social networks,

Odnoklassniki (a Russian social network), right? But no — here too they need to

scare everyone a little. And once again I urge everyone

to act.

simply refuse to comply with this law en masse

when it comes to insults, speak plainly

to be honest, you do not necessarily have to say it in explicit terms

you do not have to use obscene language, just simply

say everything you think, everything that

you feel; at least, that is what I do

all members of our team do the same

Volkov does it too, and I

express my solidarity with him because he

is sitting under arrest and now also has to

go through yet another trial for insulting

the authorities. Vorobey writes to me: tell us about

Shies. I will, because there are simply

interesting things happening there, but before that I

want to tell a rather

funny story too, about the authorities' fear. In

fact, this story is about the authorities' fear

because it is a story about how, for the

third time, for the third time, our name was stolen

the name of our party. This program

is called *Russia of the Future*, and you know

that we have tried to register the party nine times. We

held a congress, gathered representatives from the regions, brought

people together. Under the law, to register a party

you only need 500 people. Probably

no one doubts that among our

supporters there are 500 people, and right now

this program is live, right

now, and they are saying 20,000 people

are watching this program. That means you and I

could organize 40 political parties right now

if we split ourselves into

groups of 500. It is not a problem for

us to gather 500 people. Nevertheless,

the party is not being registered; nine times we

were refused, already eight times refused

we submitted documents nine times, but they

need to find a pretext in order to

deny us

they cannot exactly claim that we do not have 500

people, so they steal the name. How does this

happen? We hold a congress, submit

the documents. Here are the documents. Our party

used to be called the People's Alliance party, then

the Progress Party, and now *Russia of the Future*

and every time the same thing happens

some puppet sham party

holds a congress and renames itself

from some, I do not know, some stupid

random name invented by Kremlin crooks

the party used to be called one thing, and now it

is called the *Russia of the Future* party. If

you open the legal entities register right now,

then the *Russia of the Future* party already

exists. It is headed by a very

ridiculous little guy

who calls himself a lawyer, Dmitry

Zarin, or Alexander Zorin—he is a

highly absurd sort of character whose

job consists of the following: wherever

we took part in elections, or wherever

I went on the campaign trail,

he runs around constantly at rallies

where I am speaking to people. This happened in

Kostroma; now you can see it in

Kaluga probably in this photo; in

Novosibirsk; in Kostroma Region, I

spoke in many, many places. You can see

now in the photo, at this kind of

press conference, he simply

came up to me and starts speaking. But we are

democratic people; we cannot just

beat him up or throw him out. Besides, we understand

that he wants to be beaten up

so he can file a complaint. You see,

everywhere I go there are these

you know, like rock musicians have girls

who follow them around on tour because

they are in love with the rock star—well,

there are these little boys from the Kremlin who

follow me around and try to disrupt

some of my rallies. This is not

a big problem for me because, well,

I can speak under such difficult

conditions, when people are throwing things,

shouting, disrupting meetings, or rushing out—

people like that. I have plenty to argue with them about, and

I invite them onto the stage myself. Those who have been to my

meetings know that I say: come on, let us

talk, let us discuss anything you want

shall we discuss inequality? Shall we discuss

poverty? Shall we discuss corruption? Shall we discuss

healthcare? Education? On

any of these topics, I am ready to debate. And you

please explain to us why in Russia

healthcare is supposedly so great. You must admit, all

these

these Kremlin little stooges, in general,

have nothing to say. So, this

Zorin is now heading the *Russia of the Future* party

which is, of course, both ridiculous and annoying

The name is great, it really works:

*Russia of the Future*. And it is rather unpleasant

to think that as early as September some

truly vile, thieving

goblins will go into some election, and in the

ballot it will say *Russia

of the Future*, and under that name

the most genuinely nasty rabble

will be running. It is unpleasant, but

well, what can you say? They are afraid, afraid

Why? Because first, once we enter

the elections, we will immediately clear

the five-percent threshold in any region

and in the second cycle, that is, in federal

elections, we will simply beat United Russia (the ruling party). We

you and I—this is our common party—we

will beat United Russia (the ruling party)

simply because the other parties do nothing

What is the so-called

systemic opposition doing?

It sits there and is terribly afraid

that it will be driven out of the State

Duma (the lower house of Russia's parliament), and it protects its own

seats. But we say normal, sensible

things and work with people

so there is no doubt that we will beat

United Russia (the ruling party). There is no doubt that we are

it immediately the main opposition party

we will win parliamentary seats, and people

who receive diplomas and mandates will

work and will not be afraid to say what

they need, and that is why they are not allowing us onto the ballot

so I return once again: we

came up with Smart Voting, under which

yes, we will support the weak

cowardly systemic parties, but in order

to reduce United Russia's monopoly

so please do not delay, right

now go and register, so

here I am being asked, Alexei, isn't it

a popular question: if they know the party

will not be registered, can it move on to other

methods, Alexei?

well, let's be honest: the party is not

our main method, and our choice will be

we take part in rallies, they do not give us

permission

no one can reproach me for

being afraid to go out to

unauthorized protests, no, no one can

reproach me for that; we conduct investigations

we spread information, some kind of

strange homemade television

we organize; we use many

different methods, but among other things, you and I have the

right to register a party, and we

demand it. I am being asked about

whether I will sue the Ministry of Justice, and we

will sue. Well, it is clear that we

will be refused anyway, but we always carry this

legal procedure through to

the end. There are a lot of questions

a lot of questions, many of this kind

couldn't the party be called Navalny, or

couldn't it be named in some other way so

that the name would not be stolen? Guys, after all

Navalny is a rare surname, but not

an exclusive one. If I call the party Navalny

first of all, the law directly prohibits

a name containing a surname, but

even if I say that it is not a surname, that it is

a pasta trademark, that I will release pasta

under the brand Navalny, and then for a

party—well, that is, if I try somehow

to trick them legally, but legally

you cannot trick them, because you will come to court and

they will say: yes, here is a comrade

Navolny from some town, well, I do not know

they will find a namesake there, he is also Navalny

this party belongs to him, and as for us, let us

register mine now

as the representative of this party. From this

point of view, no legal

tricks work. But nevertheless

we will keep going anyway, including

rubbing our hands vindictively, understanding that in

the beautiful Russia of the future, we will jail

everyone who engaged in this kind of crap

so, Alexei, explain: how does the Ministry of Justice

allow a party to be renamed if it

had only shortly before accepted the registration

documents of a new party with that name?

thank you. I am being asked by de format app

dev armator; thank you for

writing something entirely sensible

that is right: as soon as we submitted to the Ministry of Justice

the documents of the organizing committee of the Russia

of the Future party, the Ministry of Justice knew that there were

people who were registering a party with such a

name, and they had no right

to rename some creepy party. But they did rename it

because in the Ministry of Justice

sit people who make unlawful decisions

serving crooks and thieves

file a complaint, vespucci? Of course we will

file one, Vespucci

so yes, that is, we will go through all

this legal route; it is not

the only thing we are doing, but

of course we will go through it. The situation with the

Superjet—I am following it closely, and

it seems we are all following it closely

and people across Russia en masse

are afraid to fly on these Superjets. About

them, every day there are news reports saying that

something on them broke or fell off, and it seems there is already

not much more to say, but I noticed one

amazing thing that I want to share with

you

but still, you understand, to what extent

someone's wild stupidity goes. In a normal

situation, what should happen after

recently Boeing planes were crashing—not just

Superjets, Boeing had two planes

crash, after which Boeing

admitted that they had some kind of

malfunction, and flights were suspended

of Boeing aircraft. In Russia, by the way, there was no such thing, and

Boeing, well, fixed the

software and fixed it, and

the planes returned to the market. That is

they suspended flights. It seemed

quite obvious that here we need

to do the same: while the discussion is ongoing, while

the investigation is ongoing, in order

not to put people in danger, just in

case we suspend flights

then we try to finish fixing this aircraft

and return it to the market. It is logical, isn't it?

Logical. So what does the creative brain of a

Russian crook do? If you now

look

well, if you go to the website of

Aeroflot, from what I saw recently

before, when you bought a ticket, you

were shown the aircraft type there: such-and-such Boeing

such-and-such Airbus, that is how it used to be

it said Superjet 100

now they have changed the name, and now there

it says not Sukhoi Superjet 100

large regional aircraft, that is

you can see this on the official

website of Aeroflot; this is

official information

large regional aircraft, that is

It’s like they’re admitting that if

you write “Sukhoi Superjet,” people

will get scared and won’t fly, or they’ll

feel some kind of discomfort. But at the

same time, they’re not taking the plane out of service.

What kind of hypocrisy is that? I mean,

you’re disguising your aircraft as a “regional

large aircraft.” What even is that?

It’s absurdity, absurdity and deception in every little thing.

Take it out of service, repair it, and then

calmly—we’re saying this as normal, sensible

people—deal with these Superjets.

Not blow them all up and stop producing them

forever. Of course Russia needs to

manufacture airplanes, but then you simply need to

take them out of service and fix them,

improve them, spend time on that—

however long it takes—and bring them back. But no,

they keep them in service, and so people won’t be afraid, they call it

a “large regional aircraft.”

That’s shameful and disgraceful.

What’s next? Let’s see, I can see that I’m being

asked by Akella.

24,000 people are watching us live.

Alexei, I remember your and Volkov’s tweets about

the quality of education at your Higher

School of Economics. I don’t agree with that, but could

you comment on it yourself

and talk about the situation? Thanks, Akella.

If you yourself study at the Higher School

of Economics, then I’d like to hear your

comments, because the story

is that, indeed, Leonid

Volkov some time ago

was criticizing on Twitter the quality

of education at the Higher School of Economics. There was

an actual scandal when graduates

and current students of the Higher School

wrote, “Why are you being so

harsh about our university?”

Well, no, I wasn’t attacking the Higher School

of Economics. There are a huge number of

wonderful students there; we have

lots of people from the Higher School of Economics working with us.

What I certainly did say, and still say, is that it disgusts me

to see that the supervisory board

of the Higher School of Economics is headed

by Volodin (a senior Russian official) at one point—a plagiarist, a crook,

just [__]—and now it’s occupied by another

great “statesman,” Kiriyenko (a senior Kremlin official). I don’t understand

how one of the country’s best educational institutions,

or an institution claiming

to be the best, can have Volodin or

Kiriyenko heading its supervisory board.

And it’s also upsetting and disgusting that

the rector of the Higher School of Economics is a United Russia party member,

and was trying to run for the Moscow City Duma.

What has happened now is, in a way,

yet another really, really nasty thing, and I

very much hope that Higher School of Economics students,

especially those who were offended and

so proud of their university, will also

react somehow. Because Lyubov Sobol

when she was a Moscow City Duma candidate, was

invited to some talk show

made by journalism faculty students,

as I understand it. It’s a talk show

that became known when they

invited Peskov (Putin’s press secretary), and then recordings

of how Peskov answered questions

leaked onto the internet and were deleted

after some time. In other words, they had

this kind of show, this class, where they invite

politicians or just some well-known

people and question them. And at some

point they invited Sobol. Sobol

said, “Yes, I’ll come,” after which this

entire little club was simply shut down.

And today Mediazona published a big

piece about it. The head of

this project basically wrote, “Guys,

things are changing; our project is closing.”

If you go to the Higher School of Economics website

and look at the “Our

Principles” section, you’ll see things there that

would bring tears to your eyes:

openness, honesty, transparency,

high ethical standards.

But it turns out none of that exists.

It turns out that there, at least in

this situation, we saw cowardice, we

saw deference to United Russia members, we

saw double standards. So Peskov

can come there, a United Russia politician working for

United Russia, a Moscow City Duma deputy,

Kuzminov can be rector, but candidate

Sobol says she’ll come, and because of that

they immediately shut it all down. So, Higher

School of Economics students who are watching this

program: don’t be pathetic cowards.

Say something about this. By the way,

today I saw several great

actions by Higher School of Economics professors

who, at the very least,

are asking Kuzminov questions, saying,

“Isn’t this a double standard?” I mean, I’m not

expecting you to start

a strike right now or block the entrance, but

at least say a few words, if you still have

some sense of

self-respect left. I’m told the talk show is called

*To the Point: Persona*.

I’m being prompted here: look on Mediazona,

there’s a big article on this topic there.

Read it—it’s very interesting. The series *Chernobyl*—

a lot of people are asking me about it,

and people are watching it very actively in

Russia.

Not only because it’s about Chernobyl,

but because it’s about our recent history.

It’s like—we see there some kind of

funny and sad things;

they show you the Soviet Union of 1986,

and it feels close to us.

Even for those who were born after that, it’s

a really great series. It’s being

watched and discussed by the whole world right now.

Please show the ratings—the latest one.

The latest, latest ranking on IMDb.

And most importantly, most importantly, there’s a site like that in the world

where they rate all kinds of

TV series—you can see that *Chernobyl* is now

in first place in the world. People all over the world

are watching it. I highly recommend it—I’ve watched

only two episodes so far. It’s a great series,

absolutely.

But what I wanted to say now is this:

amazingly, our various, well, TV

crooks and state propagandists

have already started attacking this series,

*Chernobyl*, because apparently

it blackens Soviet reality, and supposedly

it was made on behalf of some competitors.

An article came out in *Komsomolskaya Pravda* (a Russian tabloid newspaper) saying

that this series was released by certain

competitors of Rosatom (Russia’s state nuclear corporation) in order to somehow

harm Russia. Good Lord,

what complete [__] they are. If only they would just

watch this series, *Chernobyl*—well,

where it’s not exactly glorifying them, but where

the finest people in the world are shown—those

firefighters—where what’s shown is precisely the

tragedy and heroism

of people. And in that sense, the British and

Americans who made this series,

they tell this story with real affection, and

most importantly, about the ordinary people who were

at the center of it. But our propagandists even

try to turn this into some kind of

attack on Russia. Let’s

take a look—here’s the report that Rossiya 24 (Russian state TV channel)

did on it, saying that it is literally

a terrible film and hawkish propaganda from

across the Potomac. Rossiya 24 on the series *Chernobyl*:

The new series

*Chernobyl* has sparked a storm of discussion, and

the creators insist that only they

will finally tell the truth about that terrible

tragedy. In an interview with the BBC, the producer

of the series, Craig Mazin, is asked

why he thinks that he

got to the truth, and Mazin replies that

he fought with all his might against, quote,

“a global assault on the truth,” and that,

again quoting,

“if there were different versions of events, we”

that is, the creators of the series chose

the least

sensational one, emphasizing that the film

meticulously assembles the truth about Chernobyl.

The authors even began the first episode with the words

“What is the cost of lies?” And the problem is not that

we mistake them for the truth. The real

danger is that if we hear enough lies,

then eventually it becomes impossible

to recognize the truth. But do you know why

the authors of the series choose speculation about

a bloody Russia over the truth about the terrible

catastrophe? They themselves say so at the

beginning: “What is the cost of lies?” And

these terrible British people made a terrible series

that darkens Soviet reality.

But the thing is, that reality—

what happened in Chernobyl—was

truly a monstrous catastrophe

caused, among other things, by constant

lies.

Disgusting, vile lies from the people who

sat in Moscow and Kyiv, all that

Soviet leadership. I’m just, well,

speaking about this a little emotionally

because, in a way, this is

my family’s story. All my

relatives on my father’s side are from

Chernobyl. I spent every summer there. I

was in Pripyat and in Chernobyl. Our grandmother

lived in a village right nearby,

near Chernobyl. They evacuated everyone, all my

relatives—they were all resettled. Now they live in

different parts of the country, in different parts

of Ukraine, because they were exactly those

so-called “Chernobyl hedgehogs,” as they were all

mockingly called when they moved

somewhere else.

And after the accident, I’ve been there a million times.

I’ve been to Pripyat, and even to the plant itself—I

was there. You actually can go there quite easily.

During the May holidays, they let in everyone

who once lived there so that they can

visit the graves of their relatives, and I

have been in that exclusion zone many times.

Simply from my relatives, I know very well

this whole story of

endless lying—when it seemed that everyone already

knew that something at the plant had

exploded,

but they still kept silent and sent people out there

to plant potatoes—collective farm workers—

even though they were digging with their own

hands

right there in that settling

radioactive dust, receiving enormous

doses of radiation. It was just lies.

Everyone already knew there had been an explosion at the plant, but

so that foreigners wouldn’t find out, so that

they could simply hide it—I don’t even know

from whom—so as not to

admit the catastrophe, the authorities of that time

the Soviet bosses and all those

people—they sacrificed human lives. And I want

to say that in this series, *Chernobyl*,

well, even

why you really can’t make claims against the British

for this

is that, it seems to me, they portrayed many people

even a little better than they really were. For example,

the main scientist character is shown

as, well, at least in the first episodes,

such a good, humane

person who is trying to change all this.

Well, let’s look—there are archival recordings of him.

Here he is in real life; now we’ll

see how he tells those liquidators at the

Chernobyl plant, well, that

basically radiation, radio—radio

activity—it’s not really all that harmful.

archival footage from Chernobyl

and if you look at 1986, with those upbeat images at the gates

exactly, now I weigh—worked for 64 years

with the source, for the kids, it was supposedly fine

this part of the pelvis and the regulating...

in any case, like pepper, like a dart

in small doses it stimulates, in larger doses...

whereas some larger doses are harmful

but still, small amounts are supposedly stimulating

doses of radiation, and medium doses in general

were said to be harmless—this is what they told the people who

were supposed to go out there with shovels and throw away

that radioactive gravel. Well, it’s obvious that

in that monstrous situation, they probably

they probably knew exactly; all of them, including

those who were sacrificing themselves, were not

forced to deceive people and say, yes,

nothing страшного, the children will be fine

in fact, the children will be even better off now—everyone went

out there, I don’t know, to dig around in that gravel, in

that debris, because otherwise it

couldn’t be done. But one way or another, it was

a colossal, monstrous lie told to their own

citizens. And a criminal lie very often

let’s look at May 1 in Kyiv

they held it there—the explosion had happened on April 26, and all of it

was in the air, the clouds had drifted away

toward Belarus and even reached Norway

these zones of poisoned air—well, not poisoned,

but radioactive air—were being detected all over

the world; they were registering elevated radiation, and in Kyiv

they held the May Day demonstration. Here are 25

seconds of the 1986 May Day demonstration

in Kyiv

poison all around

[music]

uh

everyone already knew, everyone knew—you couldn’t breathe this air

people should have been told: don’t

go outside, don’t breathe the open air

the less contact you have with the ground, the better. Nevertheless

there was the May Day demonstration, and they were carrying

children there. Why did this have to be done?

simply—just the tradition of lying, so that

foreigners

would see that everything was fine. So let’s

send hundreds of thousands of people out into the streets

and those collective farm workers—my

relatives, say—let them go and plant

potatoes, or whatever it was they were planting, so that

everyone could see that Soviet

citizens were experiencing no

problems because of the radiation—they were planting

their little potatoes, and in Kyiv here

there were demonstrations, everything absolutely normal

all just so that in the first weeks

Gorbachev and the party bosses could lie over

the phone to world leaders—they drove

hundreds of thousands of people out to sacrifice their health

under that very radiation. That’s what the film is about

the film is not about some supposedly bad

Russians—there were Russians there, Ukrainians, whoever

they were, they are portrayed wonderfully in this film

it’s the lie of the authorities—that’s what is truly monstrous

I urge everyone to watch it; it should be mentioned that

it’s genuinely an excellent film, very easy to watch

very gripping. This is our shared

history. The disaster at the Chernobyl

nuclear power plant became, in my view, one

of the main reasons for the collapse

of the Soviet Union. The Soviet

economy simply could no longer bear all of it

relocating huge numbers of people

all of that, and then sooner or later

the truth came out, and the Soviet Union, among other things,

collapsed because of it as well. So we simply

need to know this history very well

all of it, and looking at this, yes, looking at

this endless lying, we should say that

this must never be allowed to happen again

we must never allow

the authorities to lie like this, because those lies

end up costing tens of thousands of

people dearly, in the form of

cancer, shortened

life expectancy, and so on and so forth

do watch it

all right, please show me if there are

any questions—I’ll answer them while they’re looking

for a question for me, and I want to tell you about

a rebellious TV host

Dmitry Dibrov—you probably remember him

for a time he was unquestionably the most

famous TV presenter in the country. He was

on Channel One, and he was

that kind of joker, a lively entertainer

well, in general—I don’t know him personally, I’m not

acquainted with him—but he seemed like a pleasant guy on

television. Everyone liked him very much. He was

incredibly famous. I’m sure that

even now

if you saw him, even if you don’t watch his

programs, you’d know who he is

he hosts something on Channel One and

also hosts something on the Zvezda TV channel

and then something remarkable happened to him

an absolutely striking situation, when we saw that

well, even a person who

had made his peace with it, a person who works for

the Zvezda channel—which is a vile

propaganda dump of a TV channel

Zvezda, the Defense Ministry’s channel, where

they gathered the most disgusting, vile

liars, and of course they assembled them there on the understanding that

they would lie; they probably have it in their

contracts that you

have to lie seven times a day, and then

you’ll get paid; if you lie 12 times a day

then you’ll get an extra bonus

or something. And Dmitry Dibrov, unfortunately,

worked for that TV channel, unfortunately

Zvezda. But then there was simply

some kind of catharsis, when once again they handed him

a script in which he

was naturally supposed to talk about

the harmfulness of Orange Revolutions (a reference to post-Soviet pro-democracy protest movements), and then

Dmitry

said the following—though the video isn’t quite clear there

There’s only audio, but there’s a transcript.

Listen to this — it’s really, really interesting.

Dmitry Dibrov

says he won’t put up with it anymore.

highway

[music]

[music]

[music]

[music]

It’s always very interesting, right, when

a person just sits there and endures, endures, endures

endures.

And not only does he endure it, he also works for

the Zvezda TV channel, goes on air, and then at

some point he just suddenly loses it,

and starts shouting: yes, I’m not going to keep

“sucking up to them” anymore, as Dibrov put it, and “I’m waiting

for a color revolution,” and he just spilled everything

that had been in his head, about how

all of them — why is it that the Agriculture Ministry isn’t headed by

someone else, but again by a Patrushev?

He’s speaking directly about what — about what

the whole country is thinking: why the hell do we have

first Rosselkhozbank, and now

the Agriculture Ministry headed by the son of a former

FSB director? Why is this happening?

Why do these colonels have

25 apartments and 12 billion rubles (about $130 million) in cash at home?

These thieves need to be driven out, the way

the Georgians drove them out, the way the Ukrainians drove them out.

In other words, what we’ve been talking about

isn’t

shocking news to us, right — but they

kept silent about it.

They preferred not

to talk about it anywhere at all.

They were thinking about it too, and it’s just funny

that the exact same thing is happening in all

their heads too — whether it’s Yekaterina Andreyeva

or Dmitry Kiselyov.

They think the same thing, even though he’s just as much

a crook and a thief as Solovyov.

Well yes, you have to understand that they don’t like it either.

Despite the fact that

they’re complete crooks,

they still understand that it cannot be normal

for an FSB colonel to have 12

billion rubles (about $130 million) in cash at home. And if

there are 12 billion rubles in cash there,

then obviously it’s not just his money,

but the money of the rest of the FSB leadership as well.

It’s a common fund — and what does that mean? It means the FSB is

an organized criminal group

with a common fund, with

apartments stuffed with cash, with €500 notes

and 5,000-ruble bills.

They come there with suitcases and take this

cash. How can anyone trust

the security services after that? It’s impossible. And

it’s the same with the police — they’re all like that.

And this man, with his script,

as I understand it, Dibrov was holding some kind of

script where he was condemning revolutions, and then

he just broke through completely.

It was absolutely amazing. After that he sort of

walked it back a little, but he confirmed that

it was his voice. He said, yes, that I’m

against corruption, but this

really happened. It’s just very interesting.

I remember there used to be a joke a long time ago

that Yekaterina Andreyeva, the host of

Channel One, gets drunk after every

broadcast. And now we can see, for example,

with Dibrov too, what is really going on in

these people’s heads, and how quickly

the whole damn thing will collapse to hell

when some kind of breakthrough happens,

when there’s just a little more pressure, when 10 people like

Dibrov say it out loud.

Everyone thinks Putin’s regime is

something powerful. But then look — there’s

Dibrov jumping out and yelling, “I don’t want this anymore,”

“I want a Maidan (mass protest movement, referring to Ukraine),” he shouts.

“I’ve never said on this program that I

welcome color revolutions — give me

a Maidan at my home in Rostov-on-Don.”

So where are the radicals? The radicals work at

the TV channel.

Yes, that’s how it works. And this whole Putin

power vertical, of course, can

keep existing for quite a long time, but

it’s also quite possible that it

just falls apart all at once. Who could have

imagined, in 1986,

that in Kyiv people could still be sent out to

a May Day demonstration even though in Kyiv

everyone already knew then

that the Chernobyl plant had exploded?

Who could have imagined that the Soviet Union

would soon come to an end, and

Putin’s Russia

will end the same way — unfortunately, before that

making all of us much

poorer, just as happened in

the Soviet Union. So, I see here

someone is writing to me something about Kiselyov, that he

is hosting some expensive concert in Dubai.

I don’t know — this Dmitry Kiselyov is hardly likely to

be running any

concerts. Ivan Grigoryev

asks me: “Alexei, do you watch

opposition YouTube channels?” What is an

opposition YouTube channel? But yes, I watch

— I think I more or less

watch almost everything you would call

opposition YouTube channels, if

I have time, if I see that the link is

about an interesting topic, then I watch it,

I just click on the timestamp and watch

some bits and pieces. Right now, actually,

any YouTube channel that isn’t censored

is effectively an opposition channel. Take vDud, for example —

is that an opposition channel? No.

It’s just that the guy does normal

interviews and regularly asks people

about politics.

But based on what those people say,

it ends up being an opposition channel anyway.

because right now the truth has become a kind of

oppositional force: if the official version is

nothing but deceit and lies,

then the truth itself becomes the opposition, so

I want to talk about this. I’ve been getting a lot of messages

about this town in Arkhangelsk Oblast (a region in northern Russia),

which

whose residents I support,

and try to keep supporting, and I would like

to show you a video. These are people in black, people in

masks. You know, we created

special forces, we support them so that

they can go after actual criminals,

so they can protect us from

the most

violent and dangerous people—cases that ordinary

unarmed police officers are not equipped to handle. For

a drunk

or some hooligan, there are police to detain and take them away. There are

armed police officers to

confront someone armed,

say, a thug with a knife. And then there are special forces,

meant for catching bandits, robbers,

and other dangerous people. And when I watched

these two videos—yes, and now

you’ll see footage of an arrest—look at this.

The police look like some kind of ninjas.

They’ve hidden their faces because they’re

afraid, because they’re ashamed. This is how arrests

are carried out in Arkhangelsk

Oblast.

They drag people away and

it turns out they decided to

—I showed you—

either under the arm

Do you want to? Fine. No.

Over the police—Boris, come on, Valentina.

Yes, where from?

[music]

split.

Even

in masks and body armor, with OMON (Russian riot police) written across their backs,

they’re OMON, they get early retirement, they

go home and say, of course, that they’re on the

front line here, standing guard, protecting

public order. But in reality, they’re dealing with some

woman who, in a raised voice,

quite politely, is demanding

that they show identification. ‘You are suspected’—

just as he said a moment ago—‘you are

suspected of having committed a crime.’

After that, people in masks, too ashamed

to show their faces, drag away and detain

these people who came there to protest

against Sobyanin and Chaika (Russian officials)

making money by hauling

Moscow’s waste there, to that miserable

Shies station, instead of recycling it the way

it’s done all over the world. In small

countries, somehow, the garbage problem has been solved.

There are no giant landfills in the Netherlands or Germany;

recycling is happening. But here,

they just need to dump it there, and if not, then

these scumbags in black masks step in.

For 32 seconds, you can watch how they escort detained women.

It’s just an ordinary

—as if they were taking me to

some especially dangerous criminal—but

there, at Shies, it looks much more

dramatic. Thirty-two seconds.

You are the reason nature is where it is

What are they taking you for? Right nearby.

The only thing missing is chains, you know,

some shackles on their feet,

maybe a special red suit too, and around them

30 OMON officers in masks with batons,

armed—as if this were Dr. Lecter

in *The Silence of the Lambs*. We’ve seen what kind of

security measures are now

being taken against women in

Arkhangelsk, at this Shies station.

You can see there’s nothing there—they’re leading them along

the tracks simply because there is absolutely nothing there,

just taiga, no infrastructure. Life is hard for people there,

but the one thing

our state is willing to spend money on

is sending them these

thugs in masks who will go after

people carrying perfectly justified signs. I

saw one woman’s sign, yes, saying that

‘Dear police officers, you will hear many

curses, but you have earned every one

of them.’ What is happening now in

Arkhangelsk

is truly something for which they have earned

those curses—in Arkhangelsk Oblast,

both the police and the authorities, the Moscow authorities

and the authorities of Arkhangelsk Oblast. Once again, this is the third

program in a row where I’ve talked about this, but I won’t get tired of

doing it. Maybe I’ve worn you out a little

by bringing up this topic, but still I

express my solidarity and support. I

urge everyone to go there, and people are going there now.

A tent camp has been set up there.

What’s striking is that Russian Railways

stopped—or rather, no longer stops—trains at this

Shies station so that people would not

come there from Kotlas or other

nearby towns in support. They

said that, you know, for technical

reasons, trains will now simply not

stop at this station; they will just

keep going. People were saying, practically,

that they’d have to jump off while the train was moving.

And besides the protest itself, there are also

ordinary people who simply need to get to

the station. But no one cares about those people; our

train just passes by. So

I support everyone there, I urge people to go there,

and I urge them not to give up, especially since

Putin himself said that all this should be done

with the views

of local residents taken into account. Well then, take them into account. It seems to me

that the opinion of local residents is quite

unambiguous. If a referendum were held in the region right now,

the result would be 99.9 percent.

And police officers, OMON, and

everyone else should simply

It’s genuinely shameful that they betray and

insult their own citizens. So, Ramira

asks me: what do you think about

the outrage from Russian power structures

over the launch of Starlink satellites

by Elon Musk and the subsequent distribution of

internet access across Russia?

As I understand it, dear Ramira, it’s not

really going to work as a system where

you and I just pull out a mobile phone and

boom — catch internet directly from a satellite.

That’s not how it works. There has to be

some kind of ground equipment right away, and

one way or another, that ground equipment

will be connected to our

providers, and therefore to Roskomnadzor (Russia’s media and communications watchdog).

But even so, just in case,

our authorities are, of course, against all of

this, because they do not like any

possibility — even a theoretical one — or even the idea

that you might be able to receive

or spread information freely,

or that you might be able to write whatever

tweets you want, or that you might be able to

while living in a remote area, report and post videos about

what is happening there. That’s why they, just

in case, come up with things to

block Elon Musk’s satellite internet.

I think that in the near future

they will direct some extraordinary

efforts toward this.

Because, well, for them everything depends on it.

If they stop shutting you up,

this government will collapse fairly quickly. We

started the program with this: we can see how

their ratings are falling in a simply dramatic way.

And what’s very interesting is that, on the one hand,

we see that they have developed

a set of rules for you and me about what we can

write and what we cannot write. It is

spelled out quite clearly. In particular, we

cannot criticize Putin, we

cannot use the word “suicide,” we

must not insult the authorities, we must not

criticize United Russia (the ruling political party), we must not

talk about officials’ property, and

there is a whole set of

organizations that we are supposed to label in some way.

For example, if you say ISIS,

you have to say “a terrorist organization

banned on the territory of the Russian

Federation.” In any newspaper you will find

this footnote: if you see “Taliban,” you must

write “a terrorist organization

banned on the territory of the Russian

Federation,” because the Taliban

has been included on the list of terrorist

organizations; it is banned. So, in theory,

if you, dear viewer, tomorrow

write somewhere on VKontakte, “You know, I

decided to stand up for the Taliban,” you will be arrested

immediately, you will be declared a terrorist, your

accounts will be frozen, you will be put on a list — well,

you have effectively declared that you are a member of a

terrorist organization, because

our state, the FSB (Russia’s Federal Security Service), and everyone else

have decided

that the Taliban is terrorism. And who do we

see in the center of Moscow?

And in state institutions?

Who are these nice bearded guys?

Let’s watch 37 seconds. Who are our

friends, our allies? Who are these dear guests

who come to Moscow?

37 seconds

[music]

Yes.

These nice bearded men are the leaders

of the Taliban movement — in other words, a

delegation of terrorists according to our

law — who came to Moscow

to hold talks, and everyone

receives them, smiles at them, says how wonderful they are.

But if you are a representative

of an independent media outlet and write something

mentioning the Taliban the wrong way, you will get

a warning, and then your license will be revoked.

This happened to *The New Times* magazine.

They wrote something there about Putin’s daughter,

and then in that same issue

they mentioned ISIS without adding the required label about

it being a banned organization — and bang,

they were immediately issued a warning. After

a second warning, the license gets revoked.

I simply want to say that, well,

politics is politics: yesterday we were not friendly with

the Taliban, and today we have decided

to be friendly with the Taliban. Well then, at least

take it off the list

of terrorist organizations. At the very least,

leave us alone — at least allow us

to say the word “Taliban” without the idiotic

tagline. And anyway, why is it needed?

Why does every article have to say

this nonsense: “an organization recognized as,”

blah blah blah, “terrorist”? But that is how

this state of hypocrisy works. First

we jail everyone, first we issue

warnings and sanctions against media outlets

because you are not allowed to write

the word “Taliban,” and then it’s bread and salt (a traditional Russian welcome), welcome

to Moscow — and now your hands are no longer

stained with blood,

but simply a bold handshake

with our partners in the Republic of Afghanistan.

This is, frankly speaking,

frankly, something disgusting. Lately, we have

constantly been seeing various

fights — you see fights involving journalists,

United Russia members, all these constant clashes.

And one of the most remarkable fights

I have seen — remarkable in the most

disgusting and

revealing way, showing the degree

of sheer brazenness, you might say, of those people

who are convinced of their own impunity — was

a fight between a traffic cop and a police officer. Well,

more precisely, between a man

who calls himself and is referred to as

by many of his supporters as an honest

traffic cop, and one of the senior officials, and

the son of one of the Interior Ministry officials in

the city of Surgut. Let’s look at

the 37:38 mark. Here is what this very

"honest traffic cop"

says about this incident: On May 2 of this

year, I left my house,

got into my car, and drove to work.

While driving, I saw a car,

a Toyota Camry,

which kept slowing down and then speeding up.

While it was moving, I also noticed that its license plate was

partially concealed with adhesive tape. I called

the duty unit in Surgut and reported

it. The duty officer asked me not

to hang up and to keep updating them on

the car’s movements. At the moment

when the car pulled up to a store, I

approached it and addressed the driver,

explaining that

traffic police officers would arrive shortly, and since the plate was concealed,

they would draw up an administrative report. At

that moment, the driver of the car suddenly

lurched forward, turned the wheel sharply, and began

to flee, picking up speed. I

continued relaying the car’s movements and passed

the information to the city duty unit. At

some point, the car stopped and

the driver began tearing off

the adhesive tape from his license plate. The thing is,

this young man in the leather

jacket is a police major,

serving as a senior operative

in a department in the city of Surgut,

and is also the son

of the acting head of the

Russian Interior Ministry directorate for the city of Surgut, Colonel

of the Internal Service, Vladimir Babushkin,

Anatolyevich.

I ask the Chairman of the Investigative

Committee of Russia to conduct a review under

Articles 144 and 145.

Given that he himself

is a police officer, and his own

father heads the department of the

city’s Interior Ministry office, I ask you to take this

appeal under your personal supervision. Minister

of Internal Affairs of Russia, I ask you to order

an internal review.

Look at how many layers there are to this

story, which perfectly

reflects what is happening in our country.

So, there is the acting head of the city’s Interior Ministry directorate,

in Surgut,

Vladimir Babushkin. He has a son, a police major,

who also works in the same

police force. But frankly, this situation

should not be like this. Most likely, after all,

law enforcement is one of those places

where we would prefer not to see

nepotism, right? It just shouldn’t be that

the father is the boss, and the son is

already some kind of major there, doing something.

Then this son, for some reason,

covers his license plate with tape. We understand

why the hell he does it: to fool the cameras,

so he doesn’t have to pay

fines, simply to avoid them. In other words,

he is committing an offense. Who

does that? People who

are inclined to break the law, to

systematically break the law. If

you’ve taped over your plate, that just means

you know you commit several

traffic violations a day and don’t want those violations

to be recorded, don’t want to be

fined. So he’s just that kind of

offender. He tapes it over, and then when someone

stops you, you just start fighting and

beating some guy. He’s filming it on

camera, obviously on his phone. And apparently

he’s some local blogger, a fairly

scandalous guy. But you don’t care,

because your dad is the top

cop. Then later, supposedly,

we’ll smash their faces in—we’re the authorities, we’re the ones in charge

here. We’ll tape over plates and beat people’s faces

in, and do whatever else we want here,

because we’re untouchable. There have been a great many stories out of Surgut

about exactly this sort of thing—in Mediazona (an independent Russian outlet),

you can read about torture and about

total police lawlessness.

In other words, legalized bandits, even in

the little things—bandits and crooks, taping over plates

and not giving a damn about anything. But

now, after this has blown up into a

major

scandal, as I understand it, this

major has been dismissed from the force, or at least

an investigation has begun against him. You

see, it’s the very fact of it, you understand.

They all need to be thrown out. They need

to all be fired for placing their own

children in these jobs, for some absurd reason

covering up their license plates, because

this is possible in the first place only because this kind of behavior

is tolerated and encouraged. And it’s everywhere. This is what

law enforcement agencies in Russia have

turned into. It was like this in the 1990s, too.

I remember very well how people said about Putin

that Putin had restored order because he

had supposedly put an end to this blatant

nonsense, this chaos, this police lawlessness. He may have seemed

to reduce it, because in the 1990s there was

the same kind of mayhem—just bandits,

and it was never clear whether they were fighting bandits or

whether they were bandits themselves. It’s the same thing.

For example, the same kind of bandits who ran around

detaining people and driving around in

super-expensive cars—in other words, the

very same bandits. And it all seemed to quiet down

for a while.

because some rules had been established, and

now everything is absolutely coming back.

The very same lawlessness is back—torture,

electric shocks being used on people in police stations.

They beat people, well, and again it goes so far

that it reaches absurd little details, and less

absurd things like billions of apartments and

absurd little things like not

covering their license plates with tape and

driving around the city like that. Everyone knows, no one

pays attention, and a scandal only appears

when someone records it on a

mobile phone.

But Russia also has an achievement. I kept

criticizing everything, Vladimir Putin and all that, but

here we do have an achievement, for example. Among

these achievements, one can certainly

include quantum shorts.

That is, probably, a kind of umbrella

term for what we saw this

week. We were shown

a quantum phone that is sold on

Amazon, and we were shown elite shorts

for the Ministry of Defense, which are also

sold on

AliExpress. Let's start with the shorts—it's a very

funny story. We've all gone all-in on

patriotism, and Timati, the rapper, released

a clothing collection for the Ministry of

Defense. And let's listen to a few

seconds of him explaining what a

cool, unique, very

patriotic collection it is. Thirty-two thousand three hundred

people are watching us right now, and

right now you will see

Timati praising his unique

collection, presenting the only

[inaudible] colleague, waiting [inaudible] from us, the truth

[inaudible] complain.

[applause]

There are no real achievements, so this is what we

keep seeing all the time—this kind of nonsense. There they are,

all those generals sitting in the front row.

And there stands this ridiculous Timati: 'I want

to present a jacket to you,' and then girls

walk out in shorts, and these are special shorts. I

quote: these are not just clothes,

but uniforms infused with conviction,

leadership, patriotism, attention to detail,

and complete confidence in every next

step. And we are completely confident

that all of this was simply stolen. For example,

these shorts you saw on those

lovely girls on the runway were

immediately found by internet

users—they are sold on

AliExpress, they cost 800 rubles (about $9), and this whole

Putin-style patriotism is exactly about

that: taking Chinese shorts,

slapping 'Army of Russia' on them, and going on

television saying, 'We are mighty

patriots.'

Leadership, self-confidence—and by the way,

give us some budget money,

some government contract,

buy these clothes from us, let's

sell them in stores on the central

[garbled] on the main squares.

This 'Army of Russia'

is just a relabeled tag on Chinese shorts. Don't

pay attention—people will swallow it.

We'll sell these suckers absolutely anything now,

just like they sold all of Russia

T-34 tanks made in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s as if they were

some kind of wartime T-34 tanks,

which people literally bowed to

in squares all across the country. So now

let's smear patriotism over

Chinese shorts and sell them to everyone here, and well,

that's what we're capable of, you see. They

talk about building a great country, but our

achievement—everyone is involved in this—but

it's not just Timati coming up with some nonsense.

The defense minister is sitting there,

all these generals are sitting there, and

then they all stand up and applaud, and later they

will award each other for it and something else, one hundred percent.

By the next May 9 (Victory Day in Russia), we'll see an extra

row of gleaming medals, including one, figuratively speaking,

for strengthening leadership,

patriotism, and attention to detail

in the development of a clothing line, even though it's just

Chinese shorts for 800 rubles. An even more

impressive thing we saw was

the amazing quantum phone that

was presented literally the day before yesterday.

So, this is a project on which

hundreds of millions of rubles were spent—700

million rubles, 140 million of which

were invested by the Ministry of Education and Science. And

they showed us this supposedly unique phone.

It was said to be a unique

system consisting of

phones, including a special

processing center that

performs quantum encryption that

cannot be hacked, and so on. But

of course, these phones were immediately

found on Amazon—they are sold

simply for

192 euros (about 14,000 rubles at the time) for a phone like that.

And we saw that, well, guys,

they just covered up the label. Let's once

again take a look—they simply replaced

the sticker. And now, of course, they're very

comically trying to wriggle out of it, saying, 'No, that's

not so important. Forget the phone, yes, we

used an American phone, but the most

important thing we spent 700

million rubles on is the quantum

encryption that happens somewhere

inside a unique little box, and then

the signal goes to an ordinary American

phone.' But we understand that—well, I

hope there really is some kind of quantum

encryption there after all, that it's not

a complete lie—but there are already very serious

doubts. Because first of all, you

claimed that this was a system where

the phone—and it was specifically emphasized, the phone—was

a domestic development. But it isn't; it's just

a relabeled sticker. And secondly, well...

Guys, if this system is being made for

the purpose of encrypting, say, inside a

little box there, you encrypt something

using quantum encryption, and

no one can figure it out—but if then

the signal goes out already decrypted

to an American phone, where American

manufacturers—whatever they may be—

can sew in anything they want and intercept your

signal once it has already been decrypted inside an American

phone,

then you have to admit that your unique quantum

encryption in the middle no longer has

much meaning. That is, everything

around it just turns into

some kind of primitive fake

that is exposed just as easily as that

famous robot Alyosha (Alexei), who turned out

not to be a robot at all, but a person in a robot suit,

because the whole point of all this is simply

to show it on TV,

to spend the money, steal it, and then

show it on TV again—some supposedly unique

quantum phone of some kind,

developed just like Putin’s missiles—

flying, nonexistent,

‘unique weapons,’ and so on and so

forth. And do you know what the reason for all this is?

We also saw the reason for all this

this week. It was

a rather shameful spectacle

called the defense of the Candidate of Sciences dissertation

by Vladimir Putin’s daughter.

Because Yekaterina Tikhonova has now

become a Candidate

of Physical and Mathematical Sciences.

And I have nothing against Yekaterina Tikhonova; I

can absolutely assume that she may

be an intelligent woman, and

that this intelligent woman may well

understand physics and fully have the

right to become a Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. But I

am a little unhappy with certain things. First of all,

she was personally introduced there by the rector

of Moscow State University, Sadovnichy, who was basically just

hovering around her—there are no words for it—and then

the very next day he received the Order

‘For Merit to the Fatherland,’ first

class, first class. I mean, really,

you just can’t rub it in our faces like that.

And on top of that, they are still lying, saying

that she is not Putin’s daughter. Let’s

watch a few seconds of her

speech at the dissertation defense.

Here we see the class... look at the threads and...

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personally

and for newcomers

that is,

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here

By the way, I want to say a few words in defense of

Yekaterina Tikhonova. There were even quite a few

complaints that she had earphones in

her ears, and people were saying that

a signal was being transmitted directly to her and that she

was just parroting it like a trained monkey.

That’s not true. We carefully watched

the video: she does indeed come out wearing those

AirPods—or whatever they’re called—but

then during the defense she takes them off.

So she was undoubtedly saying what she

had memorized or what she knew, but that’s not even

the point. Just say it plainly: Putin

has a daughter.

Her name is Yekaterina Tikhonova, and she, like

everyone else, can study at Moscow State University and

defend a dissertation there. But no—even now,

even the boldest media outlets still write

‘Putin’s alleged daughter, Yekaterina

Tikhonova.’ Let’s be done with this already.

Yekaterina Tikhonova

is President Putin’s daughter.

She is sitting there at Moscow State University, and it’s unclear why she was

included in the university’s academic council, because if

she has only just defended her dissertation, then she cannot

possibly—surely you’d agree—

be on the academic council of one of the country’s leading

universities. And when the rector of Moscow State University there is simply

bending over backward before her

and fawning all over her,

groveling and saying this is a unique

scientific invention, some kind of super

breakthrough—well, that is exactly why we do not have

any real quantum

encryption, and we can’t even sew shorts ourselves

and have to buy them in China, and all of this

is because it runs contrary

to science—to normal science, to the development of science.

Because the rector of Moscow State University cannot

be the academic supervisor of an ordinary graduate student,

simply cannot.

He cannot. And if the rector of Moscow State University

acts as academic supervisor for a graduate student

because she is the president’s daughter, that

shows that the whole system

is broken, it is rotten. Yekaterina Tikhonova

could very well have had an ordinary academic

supervisor, like ordinary graduate students,

and defended her dissertation that way. But no—even this had to be turned into

some kind of triple spectacle,

for show.

And then they bring out the rector of Moscow State University, and

he sings her praises, and they simply

put some obscure girl

on the academic council. That is not how science works. Either

there is real competition,

an exchange of ideas, and an understanding that people

become scientists

because of their actual merits in the field

of science—or else this whole system immediately

falls apart, as it is falling apart here.

All we have is simply

the jokes we make every time

Vladimir Putin, against the backdrop of all this,

tells us there will be

scientific breakthroughs. Today he declared

that he knows how to ensure global

domination, and they know it as countries

turn into becoming rulers

of the world

because the ruler of the world will be the one who q

masters artificial intelligence, and he

is announcing a new program so that Russia, too,

can become a leader in the field of

artificial intelligence. Unfortunately, Russia will not become

a leader in this field, unfortunately, Russia

in artificial intelligence, because you,

Vladimir Vladimirovich,

keep rectors like that one at INGU (likely a university/institute), who has been there

for 20 years as well—a United Russia party member—at the Higher School

of Economics; we have United Russia people everywhere, we have

United Russia people sitting in positions who, instead of

doing science, take care of your daughter

whose identity is for some reason concealed, and escort her by the

arm, and all together now—I’m not, they’re not

saying it, I have no data—but that they

wrote it for her

this academic paper—I hope that is not

the case. Well then, all the more so, if she wrote it herself,

then let her defend it on the same terms as everyone else, and

let her defend it. And if we have some

real scientists,

they are of no interest to anyone. They are in

Akademgorodok in Novosibirsk (a major Russian science hub), earning

21,000 rubles a month, but nobody

cares about them, because here we are all

together

servicing Katerina Tikhonova. That is not how science

works, and unfortunately we will not become any kind of rulers of the world

unfortunately, we will not become. In their Beautiful

Russia of the Future, we will not seek domination over the world

we simply will not aspire to it; instead, any of our

scientists

will, on equal terms, be admitted to

an institute, and then on equal terms they

will defend their dissertations, then they will

receive grants based on their scientific

achievements

and then perhaps, little by little, we may

become leaders in the field of artificial

intelligence. And thank you very much to everyone who

watched the program. See you next

Thursday

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