Sechin is sponsoring Putin’s daughter, the shaman will be sent to a psychiatric hospital, and police lawlessness lies ahead

[music]

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

That means we are live on air

as usual at this time on Thursdays

with the program *Russia of the Future*, and I am its

permanent host, just as exhausted

as everyone else by quarantine, self-isolation, and

everything that is happening — Alexei Navalny.

Or, this week, the man who

must answer for his vile behavior — that's how

United Russia deputy Ernest

Makarenko, one of the leaders of United Russia

in New Moscow, I think in

Novo-Peredelkino.

And our petition on ROI has been approved. You

know that we were collecting signatures for

the Five Steps program. Of course you know — I

have been driving you crazy lately

with these signatures, with this campaign, and I will

keep doing it because it is very important.

And now they have been giving us the runaround,

specifically on the government

website, because what we were doing before

was very important, and what we are continuing to do

is super important, and

collecting lots of signatures, no matter where,

is probably even more important than these 100,000 on

the state portal. But

the state portal is a formal

mechanism that the government will have to

respond to. So please, while this program

is on — last time the program was watched by

100,000 people at peak live viewership — we

have, I think, about 37,000 signatures left

to collect. And in fact, Plan A today is this:

at 1:30 p.m. we learned that the petition

had been approved, and the plan is to collect these 100,000

signatures in 24 hours. Signing is a little

more complicated than usual there — it is not

just an email; it is a verified

signature. But I very much hope that we

will collect them within a day, and of course I would like

us to gather the remaining number while this

broadcast is on. So please, you have

plenty of time: you can watch me,

listen to me for a while, and then

just switch over and vote. If you have already

voted, call out: Mom, Grandma, or

son, daughter, come over here — and let

them vote too. This is very, very

important. Send your questions with the hashtag

#RussiaOfTheFuture on Twitter; they will be

passed along to me, and I will try to answer them.

Let me remind you that you can

become friends of our channel,

click the Sponsor button, and you can

find the link in the description. And there, under

the link to this petition on ROI, there is

a link showing how to send little ducks —

wonderful little ducks that run across

the screen. Each duck brings us

a few rubles in support of our

movement, our program, and our channel.

There are already a lot of questions, I can see.

Right now, 32,000 people are watching our live

broadcast — 32,000 right now, guys.

Just one minute of your time, and we

will make this vote happen, so

please, do not be lazy.

People are asking me: what do the numbers mean? What

do the numbers on my mug mean? Well,

go ahead and guess.

Whoever guesses first and writes it — that person

wins. I would even give some kind of prize, but

it is unclear how to track who was first

to figure out what these numbers mean — numbers that, by the way,

should make Nikita

Mikhalkov (a prominent Russian filmmaker and public figure) nervous.

666, 36, and 9 — that is

a seriously

serious thing. Anyway, with the hashtag #Russia

OfTheFuture, live on air,

we will talk about the elections today, about the fact that

there are, of course, many questions about this. I can see

questions already about the police and everything else.

We will discuss all of it, but I want to begin with

ombudsman Vladimir Vorontsov, who

is currently under arrest. He has

not yet officially been recognized by any

human rights organization as a political prisoner,

but I absolutely believe that

we should already consider him one.

And what is happening right now is very important:

right now, within the Interior Ministry system, where, well,

everyone is squeezed, intimidated,

terrified, anxious, and afraid of one

another, informing on one another — even there,

there is now a campaign underway in his

support. Some people are even openly

signing their names. There may not be many of them, but

as you can see, there are people with covered faces,

and there are also people with completely uncovered faces.

Show us — there are even some

majors there, I saw them — that is, there are

senior officers. That is great. In the last

program I said that it was very

important whether we would now see, within the system,

some kind of campaign in support of Vorontsov.

Because who is Vorontsov? He is the leader

of the police union, and now

the bosses, the employer, are effectively

jailing the leader of the police union in order

to make life worse for ordinary cops,

so that there will be no such person

who would defend the ordinary cop. And if

those ordinary cops do absolutely nothing

to stand up for Vorontsov, that

of course means that, well,

our law enforcement system is completely finished.

It is not in any

sense a law enforcement body; it is

a mafia-like structure. You may be sitting there now and

saying, “Come on, enough already, it has always

been mafia-like, we know all about it.”

But still, it is a huge structure.

There are all kinds of different people there. They

may have different attitudes

toward civilians, yes, but if they cannot even defend themselves…

want to fight against this

injustice and help themselves. Well, that

means things are really bad, so

let's keep an eye on all of this. I just

want to state very clearly, on my own behalf,

that I absolutely believe that, in

the circumstances in which all this

is happening, Vorontsov is unquestionably

a political prisoner of the system, a person

who has suffered for defending

police officers and for demanding

respect for their labor rights, first and foremost

— their rights — and he is unquestionably being subjected

to political repression by the leadership

of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. This

is something people absolutely need to know. 45,000

people

are watching us live. I can't

read this: hard sign, e, hard

sign, pi, and an exclamation mark writes to me

that yes, the inscription on the mug is a link to

the petition on ROI. Exactly right. And our

main link of the day, which I hope you will

visit, is r.ru and then these

numbers that I don't know. It's quite possible

that they really did come up with some

numbers to make it all look very

much like 666. If you're thinking right now

that I'm some kind of complete

paranoid maniac, that's not true, because

back when there was a mayoral

election, the polling station where I vote

really was, through some kind of

manipulation, assigned the number

1488 to it, and before the election they trolled me, saying

look, nationalist Navalny, and even his

polling station is 1488. So that's the kind of

funny

thing that happened with our number. Go

to ROI and vote. 45,000 people are

watching us live. I'm really

tempted to say that until you

vote, until we reach 100,000, I

won't end this livestream. Honestly, it

scares me a little myself, because what if

— I don't know — at least the part of you

that loves these hellishly long broadcasts

deliberately won't vote so that

I stay live on air for two days.

Please go and vote — it's important

just to give a slap in the face to

this whole government that says

that, well, these are some kind of, you know,

Ukrainian bots or State Department bots

that voted, not real half a million

people, but just who-knows-who. And now

now there is the state ROI, and on this

state ROI we need to quickly collect

100,000. If we collect these 100,000 very quickly,

then Putin, to whom they will of course

bring it and say, 'Hey, Vladimir

Vladimirovich, did you see? They collected it in

a few hours,' then it means this whole

thing is supported by millions. It's very

important to begin with the first big

story — the remarkable story

of Anatoly Bykov. I spoke about it

last time on the program, and in fairly

great detail, but quite a lot of

people from Krasnoyarsk wrote to me and scolded me for

calling it the Krasnoyarsk

Oblast, because it turns out that everyone there

gets really worked up about it — I mean, it is of course

a krai (territory), and in the heat of the live broadcast I

said oblast, and apparently that terribly

annoys all the local residents. Please forgive me

for that. But anyway, I was sent

a lot of interesting

details, and the sequence of

events is important, because even if

we

set aside for the moment the Interior Ministry staff and all

the federal media calling him a contract killer and so

on, this is actually a story about

how there are local guys with a complicated

history, and now Moscow guys

who understand that the locals will beat their

United Russia candidates have teamed up

for the election campaign, and we

will talk later today in more detail

about innovations in electoral

legislation. This is exactly what they are

moving toward. Bykov is being kept off the ballot because

his term expired — or rather, let me put it correctly now,

so that the whole

sequence is clear: in April, he

— this Anatoly Bykov — already had

a suspended sentence, and his

disqualification period during which he was

barred from participating in elections was ending, and

already, as part of preparations to

keep him out of the election — and most importantly to

keep his party, which he

controls in Krasnoyarsk Krai, out of the election — and there

he controls the party holding the license

for Patriots of Russia. Well, you know how the

party system works in Russia: basically, you

can, in principle, bring money to Moscow

and buy yourself a branch of some party

— left-wing, right-wing, liberal — and United Russia too.

You can buy United Russia; buying

United Russia is harder, but if you bring enough money

and praise their leader, then United

Russia will be sold to you. So Bykov,

by some means — we won't get into exactly which

ones — controls part of Patriots

of Russia and really is beating United Russia there.

And so his term, within the framework of which

he was prohibited from

participating in elections, is ending, and they

started in advance churning out material about him

— this is what journalists from Krasnoyarsk

wrote to me about — special commissioned

reports, preparing the local public for the idea

that Bykov is already

someone who must not be allowed into the election at all,

some kind of contract killing — and now, here,

let's take a look: back in February of this year

That year, NTV aired a report. I’ll stay in the corner

so we don’t get banned, but this is

actually very simple. It’s important, important to understand the whole

sequence of how they prepared all this.

That’s all. 44 seconds. NTV against Bykov. Three months

ago, the lives of three entrepreneurs

took a shocking turn: new owners

suddenly appeared for their land. How

could this happen in 2020, decades

after the 1990s? It became clear

after the raiders’ confession: “We’re from

Bykov, from Bykov, from Bykov. Don’t

go anywhere, guys,” they say. “It’ll be worse

for you. We have power. We have

Petrovich. Anatoly Petrovich Bykov. I think

there’s only one like him in the region.” Negotiations, according to

the businessmen, were conducted by one of

the aides of the influential businessman

Alexei Talyu. Incidentally, he was recently

detained for driving a car while

under the influence of drugs.

Anatoly Bykov, whose surname

the raiders are using as cover, is indeed a figure

well known far beyond

Krasnoyarsk: the former head of an aluminum

plant, a philanthropist, and, as they say, a very

influential

businessman. So, until just recently, it seemed

that this Bykov—well, no one really had

anything against him. He existed quite

legally. He was barred from the elections

after a law was passed under which

people convicted of serious offenses, even with suspended

sentences, cannot run for office. But he

continued to exist quite legally, was

a completely normal politician, he had

a local party branch, and basically in

Krasnoyarsk everyone understood that he was

popular, and some people around him were

popular too. He was almost beating United Russia, but

until recently, basically,

he hadn’t said anything against the authorities. And now

let’s look at how Bykov’s rhetoric changed,

and after that, essentially, he was handed

what appears to have been a political

sentence: in order to keep you

out of the elections, we’ll also put you in jail. And

for 28 seconds, here’s what Bykov has recently

been saying about Putin: “I get the feeling

that our president doesn’t live in Russia. He

lives on another planet. I would even

recommend that our president, instead of

the occasional little fishing trip and vacation with our fellow countryman,

Defense Minister Shoigu, travel through

Siberian villages, settlements, and districts—just

take a little tour. If they’re afraid to do that, I’m

ready to travel alongside them and show them

what our Russia really looks like today,”

the modern one.

And naturally, this simply could not be

accepted by the Kremlin and the local United Russia officials

because Bykov, whatever you may think of him,

whatever peculiarities his biography may have,

is saying literally the same thing

that roughly every other

Russian man, especially in Siberia, says. He

is saying: “What, have you people in Moscow

completely lost touch? Go drive around and

see what our roads are like.” That’s exactly

what he’s saying, word for word. But he’s not

just some random guy saying it—he’s running

for office. He has money, that’s a fact, he’s

a fairly wealthy man, he has

a party branch, and now he could

crush United Russia. So they began

carrying out a special operation. In fact,

in its details it’s actually very

funny, because it shows what hellish

prostitution

our federal TV channels are engaged in. And to an even

greater, even more disgusting

degree of prostitution than even official

officials. There is this particular

journalist named Pavel Brykin. I had never even

heard of his existence. Again,

Krasnoyarsk journalists sent me

the story. He’s an incredible guy. He has

a special trick. First of all, he

is always traveling around with some cops

and he’s basically what you’d call—I don’t

really like the term—but what you’d call

an obvious stooge journalist.

A journalist, meaning he works for

equally corrupt law enforcement officers

who are either carrying out a political

order or some kind of paid

job. And he has a special trick: he

gets hit by a car. He did it in Krasnoyarsk,

and in Vladivostok too.

Can you imagine? This keeps happening to

the journalist: some people

he’s making reports about

start running him over with a car, he falls

somewhere, and then there he is, lying on the ground

afterward, giving an interview about how terrible

it all was. Let’s watch such an episode in

Krasnoyarsk; there was a similar one in Vladivostok.

A traffic accident has just occurred in Krasnoyarsk

in the courtyard of a building on

Chernyshevsky Street, I think.

75A. This is where the closest aide to

Anatoly Petrovich Bykov lives.

Alexei got out of the car, got into his

Mercedes, noticed our film crew,

which happened to be in his way, and

despite

that, sharply pressed the gas pedal and

ran over my right

leg. You understand—he’s lying there, dying, but

dying and still not giving up.

With weakening hands, he holds the microphone and says, “You

know, I got run over,” and this kind of thing

has now happened to him for the second time. Well, it’s

his signature trick: he sees, you know,

like soccer players—someone nudges him and he immediately

drops, lies there, and screams, “My God, it hurts!”

And there’s another wonderful

reporter like that. Here’s what he says:

the person who at that moment was behind

the wheel of the car. 31 seconds. Alexei Talk

Listen, I walk up and ask, “What happened?” He

pulls out, snatches the microphone, and says, “I’m

a journalist with Russia 24. I’ll have you jailed. You’re

obstructing journalistic activity,”

and then asks the question: “Why are you taking money

from crime boss Anatoly

Bykov?”

That was the whole situation — an absolute

provocation, with enormous sums of money spent on it.

NTV immediately shows up, literally

within 10 minutes. They don’t hide the fact that they

flew in from Moscow, that they’ll stay here

until they’ve filmed

an interview with Anatoly Petrovich, until they’ve

shot their reports there

— provocative ones. But the most interesting thing in

all of this is the sheer

monumental about-face by the entire system. Yes, I

don’t doubt for a second that later clips from

this program will be shown on repeat, saying that

Navalny is defending crime boss

Bykov. But let’s look

at how the current regional governor,

a man named Uss, a United Russia member, and very much

a supporter of the authorities, quite recently

spoke about Anatoly

Bykov himself: “I’ve known Anatoly Petrovich

for a long time, and to me he is not only a politician, not

only a regional legislator, but also, as a person,

a highly extraordinary and

talented man — talented in everything, starting

with the way he organizes the work

of people in his district and ending with his ability

to lay out a proper feast or organize a

magnificent tournament. I don’t know of a single

undertaking that Bykov has failed to pull off, failed to

carry out at the finest, the very

best level. But in the region he is known,

naturally, above all for his

social initiatives. It is hard to find among

the deputies another person who has

done so much both to support

disadvantaged children and to develop sports

and to support veterans, in concrete,

targeted ways, or through large-scale

events. Therefore, he is a Figure, he is

a figure with a capital F, and one of the

key pillars of our mighty

region.” The best man on Earth, a pillar,

a cornerstone — the whole region rests on him. And

those social programs — what can you say? Every

deputy knows him; they adore and love him. All of

United Russia was crazy about Anatoly Bykov, but

then suddenly something happened

— it looks like he might beat United

Russia, and that was it. Moscow said, “You know,

it’s time for you to stop loving Anatoly Bykov,” and they

stopped. Now, I’m not claiming that

I know how things are arranged in Krasnoyarsk

or how it all happened there, or that I understand the true

picture surrounding Anatoly

Bykov himself. I don’t know — I admit that.

I admit it completely,

honestly. But it’s so disgusting to watch how you

were all practically fawning over him there, because

most likely he was giving you

money too. And now, when he started speaking out

against this government, and you understand that he

can beat you on anti-government slogans, he

has to be crushed: bring in a bunch of hired

journalists and simply wage, across the whole country,

a propaganda campaign against him with

these so-called journalists. Why am I

dwelling on this? Because there’s this whole line about how

all Krasnoyarsk journalists are supposedly

bought and corrupt. Well, for the local ones

it’s harder to switch sides just

like that. I mean, you were just

praising Bykov, you were just on

normal terms with him there. People — you

know people vote for him — you can’t

just, the very next day,

So maybe Krasnoyarsk journalists haven’t

reached that degree, that level

of spinal flexibility that

people — excuse me, I’m getting worked up —

their colleagues in

Moscow have. They can’t do it that quickly, and

that’s why Moscow is pushing the line that

everyone there is completely corrupt. And one

of the main drivers of this

anti-Bykov theme goes on air and

tells them directly, well,

“you know, yes, journalists from Moscow came

and, amazingly enough, really filmed

all the investigative actions, but

that’s simply because we come from Moscow,

we’re such honest journalists, while all the locals are

of course corrupt. Let’s listen — 21 seconds.”

“Local journalists curse us and

insult us, writing online, ‘Why did these

bought-off Moscow journalists come here

and get permission?’ I’ll explain: because you

local journalists are not trusted, because

for some reason you all treat with great respect

these dubious

‘authority’ businessmen (a euphemism for underworld-linked figures), and you do not

speak, you do not tell the truth about these

people.” See how nicely

Vladimir Solovyov laughed — heh-heh-heh-heh. So, in other words,

that’s the reaction: we’re being accused

of being corrupt, but we’re not corrupt. Because

you used to praise Bykov, right? United

Russia — all of you praised Bykov as long as

he seemed to be for Putin, or simply

kept quiet. And when it became clear that he was, well,

gaining a lot of support but still wouldn’t challenge

United Russia’s monopoly, then as soon as he

stepped beyond those bounds, that was it:

he became the worst of all, journalists became

corrupt, and they wouldn’t even let a local journalist...

Let’s look at the report at 1 minute 14 seconds.

Federal

colleagues, mocking his surname,

call him ‘Alkashkin’ (a mocking distortion implying “drunkard”). Returning again to

the subject of Anatoly Bykov’s arrest, as an example of

to the people who are here defending him right now

standing up for him, and using rather strange

expressions at that—because their patron, the so-called

man they see

there in all sorts of different positions,

they see him as their protector, a kind of

Robin Hood. He doesn’t talk like that, after all. As for

the admirers of Anatoly

Petrovich, at least learn how to conduct

yourselves the way Bykov does, and only then start shouting

that you’re right, and so on. And don’t

degrade yourselves and turn into this kind of—well,

basically some kind of lout who knows nothing except swearing

and other crude expressions. And

the settlement called Udachny (“Lucky”) became unlucky on May 7

for Anatoly Petrovich Bykov and for

his songbird Dima—what’s his last name, Polushin?

Dmitry Polushin. Well, judging by his face, he looked to me like

Dmitry the drunk. It’s surprising

that this drunk Dmitry couldn’t manage it,

because he sat at the dacha for a long time

thinking about how to come to his senses

after, on May 7, his ATM

stopped working and he could no longer hire anyone on the

banks of the Yenisei, and he doesn’t actually want to work.

His mug is already this huge,

already stinking all the way from Krasnoyarsk. I’m already

switching back to your language again.

Yes, that’s Dmitry for you.

See how easily it comes out when you talk like a drunk?

Just a moment ago everything was okay, and now

suddenly all the local corrupt people who

are defending him, and the local journalists—

they’re drunks, they stink, and so on. Why

am I going on about this for so long? Because,

first, this is going to keep happening;

second, Krasnoyarsk Krai is one of

the most important federal subjects in Russia, and I very much

hope that all residents of Krasnoyarsk

Krai will pay attention to this. You

may have voted for Bykov before, or not

voted for Bykov before; maybe

you don’t like him, but probably even more

than that, you really shouldn’t

like this boorishness. I mean, I can’t call it

the boorishness of Muscovites—I’m a Muscovite myself

and I take that perfectly normally. It’s the boorishness

of an utterly bought-and-paid-for

hack, from the same Bykov camp, feeding from the same

trough. And now he comes here and lectures everyone.

That’s why United Russia in

Krasnoyarsk Krai needs to be crushed, routed,

not given a single vote. Well, including because

people themselves

should decide: if Bykov is really that bad, then probably

they won’t vote for him. And if, well,

okay, he’s some kind of

rich man in his district—suppose he

can even buy something there, shower all the

pensioners with gifts, and they elect him—but probably

his party as a whole, in elections across the entire

region—a huge region—is unlikely to be able to buy

everyone. Let people decide for themselves. And if this

Bykov lived perfectly normally for 20 years and

now they’re fabricating some kind of case against him

over something from 24 years ago, then that’s

simply a mockery of all the local

people, and people should be outraged by it, should

resist it. This concerns all

regions. 78,000 people are watching us live right now.

That’s about twice as many as

we still need to gather right now on our ROI (Russian Public Initiative platform)

to reach

100,000 votes. We can’t get there.

Why? Because you’re sitting there like this,

in front of the screen with

your tea, thinking: ah, whatever, someone

will vote without me, my

vote doesn’t matter anyway.

It’s very important that you specifically don’t

get lazy. And you say, oh, I don’t remember

my password, and I don’t remember my login, I, I—

I know perfectly well all these—not excuses, but

thoughts—that I myself have every

time someone tells me to

sign something, do something, submit something. You log in, and

what was the password again? Well, okay,

like, come on, Lyoshka (diminutive of Alexei), keep talking about something else,

some other people

will vote. No—they won’t vote for you.

No other people will do it. You vote,

right now. It’s very important. We’ve got 68,000 votes.

There’s almost nothing left—32,000.

Right. Nina Pavlovna Zinchenko asks me:

“Good evening, Alexei, what do you think

about the merger of the NAO and

Arkhangelsk Oblast, and how is it beneficial

to the authorities?” Excellent question. And an excellent

post on this topic was written by FBK director

Ivan Zhdanov, who is himself actually

from that NAO—the Nenets Autonomous Okrug.

And this really is

—well, for people who don’t

closely follow these regions, or regions in general,

it may seem like some kind of nonsense,

some insignificant issue. But in

fact, everyone who follows this knows

it’s a significant issue, because

the NAO has a sea of money—

a huge amount of oil money. In

per capita terms, it’s a very rich region,

while

it’s also a corrupt region. But since

there are few residents and everyone knows each other there,

of course there is corruption, but everyone is kind of

in plain sight,

so it’s not that easy to steal a lot. And

Arkhangelsk Oblast is a huge region,

very poor, and we can debate for a long time

whether that’s fair or unfair, but the fact is

that the residents of the NAO would never, under any

circumstances, vote for a merger with

Arkhangelsk Oblast. That’s the second issue:

how we are supposed to ensure some degree of

equality among regions. That is, the fact

that Arkhangelsk Oblast

is closer to NAO oil does not mean that

it has a greater right to it than—I don’t

I know, Ryazan Oblast is a separate issue.

The question is how equality should be ensured there

among all the federal subjects, but

the fact is that if you hold an honest

vote, this will never happen, and

in the referendum that will take place there,

both federal subjects have to

vote. You can’t just do it so that

Arkhangelsk Oblast says, well,

basically, we’re incorporating you into ourselves — that’s

not allowed. The Nenets Autonomous Okrug (NAO) has to

vote for it too. That’s impossible, and so

these

so-called innovations in remote voting,

electronic voting, voting by

mail — voting by whatever means — have already inspired plenty

of jokes about voting with a TV remote

control, probably. And at this

referendum — I don’t know exactly when it

will happen, when it’s scheduled — we

will see either new tricks or at least

a full-scale vote-rigging operation.

Because they will have to falsify

basically all the votes cast in the NAO,

every single one of them, and that’s very important.

Ah, there are a lot of questions here about

merging regions. You see, people,

if we don’t live there, it seems to us that

whether they merge or not is none of our business. But

these things actually matter. They concern

logistics, they concern

funding per capita,

average wages, and so on.

It’s all complicated; everything in Russia’s regions

is very, very complicated, and we inherited

as a legacy

this kind of complicated, strange, and

idiotic — I’m being honest, idiotic —

federal system, one that is often

completely inexplicable.

But what the Kremlin is doing is not trying to

act fairly. Once again, it

starts cheating, and in this

particular situation there will be

a massive fraud against both all the residents of the NAO and

all the residents of Arkhangelsk Oblast,

because they will be forced to take part in

some kind of fake vote.

We’ll be watching this very closely.

So, Alexei, after the “Five

Steps” petition gathers the required number of signatures

on ROI (the Russian Public Initiative platform), what happens next? asks

Viktor Medved. Well, it’s not like

100,000 votes will make a casino-like ding

and money will start pouring out of

your laptop screen. No. After

we collect 100,000 — and as part of our

broader political campaign, we’re collecting

signatures here, applying

political pressure on the authorities there — we’ll

also have a formal mechanism, among other things.

Because right now the authorities say: we don’t

know, some people are demanding something from us on

the internet, we haven’t heard anything

about it at all. We have our position — it was stated by

Siluanov, it was stated by Putin — we fulfilled

one demand. Well, it wasn’t even really one

demand; we just did something

because we wanted to do it. But in fact,

as Putin says, there is no such thing as a

constructive agenda requiring us

to pay money to anyone at all.

No one is constructively demanding that from us, and

so when we collect 100,000 signatures, there will be

a document sitting in the Russian government

that they are obliged to respond to.

This was Putin’s initiative, and Putin

said that 100,000

verified signatures — a law was passed on this —

must receive official consideration. And we

understand that during that review

they’ll squirm and twist around,

wriggle like snakes, dodge, lie, and once again

spin some story. But the fact remains

a fact: they will have to say yes or no, and

we will put them in a situation

where a huge, organized number of people

has said:

we demand direct financial assistance. Here are five

specific points. You’ve already almost

fulfilled one; now fulfill the other four. And they

will have to respond. That is very important within

the political process.

But overall, as before, everything is still very

complicated. I

see a question from “Around the World in Nine” — damn, how do you

come up with these names? Alexei, Vladimir

Milov said that these ham-fisted devils and

economically — I won’t repeat that word

—

it rhymes with “McDuck” —

have screwed up Rosneft. How so? Watch

Milov; he understands this very well.

He really is one of the best

experts on this subject. Look,

you can simply — better yet — look at

Milov’s work; you can look at Rosneft’s market capitalization,

you can generally show the financial

figures, look at the financial indicators

of Rosneft to understand just how badly

things have been messed up there. And Sechin really — I mean,

he is one of — well, you can’t say that

he’s one of the dumbest people

in the country. He’s a very cunning, thieving

official, he’s insanely rich, he’s

absolutely greedy, a criminal

kind of guy. In that sense he’s not stupid, but for

a person who holds

public office, he is certainly

doing stupid things and systematically

looting, squandering, and

wrecking the company Rosneft. A very

funny thing — good that you asked me about it —

happened literally today, actually,

because you may remember that in

the previous program I told you about

how Putin’s eldest daughter, Maria

Vorontsova, got a new toy. She

Now she will be in charge of genetics.

And then there's this:

the younger one, Katerina Tikhonova, is playing around with

some kind of innovation center that will be

built at Moscow State University, and there will be some kind of

giant Valley, with a huge amount of

money, and she is de facto running

Moscow State University in practice, yes, because the rector,

Sadovnichy,

who was her academic supervisor and now

looks after her. Well, he's this little old man

they keep around simply because he is

Katerina Tikhonova's puppet, basically.

The older daughter was also handed a huge

fat slice of the pie, probably even fatter

than the younger one's: some kind of innovations in

genetics. That's especially very

funny, because in the previous program I

told you that a BBC report had come out

saying that Putin's daughter

would be handling all this genetics stuff

and that Rosneft had poured a ton of money into it, to which

Sechin said—I showed you this in the last program—

that it was all nonsense, all lies, that we

have absolutely nothing to do with it,

with any genetics center,

with any genetics at all—have you lost your minds? We

will go to court, they literally said.

Meaning, we'll sue everyone and get everyone

convicted. And today, what happens?

Today Putin is holding an online meeting

on this exact genetics issue, and

it turns out that Russia is now going to

make, of course, endless

breakthroughs in genetics, and all of this will be

commanded by Putin's daughter. Three

centers are being created in different parts of Russia, and all of it

will of course be financed by the company

Rosneft, which will serve as the main

coordinating center. Why the company

Rosneft? What does the company

Rosneft have to do with this? It's unclear. But just

last week they denied it, and now they're saying

yes. Let's watch 50 seconds of Putin: "As part of

the national Science project, there are being created

three world-class genome centers.

Each of them should represent

a consortium of research

institutes, universities, industrial and

innovative companies, stretching from

Novosibirsk to Crimea. The main

technological partner of the program

has become Rosneft. Igor Ivanovich, you

reported to me quite recently that

the relevant agreement with

the government had been signed.

Today, tell us about Rosneft's concrete steps within

the genetic technology development program.

Let's look at how work is progressing in

the key areas today, in this

case in genetics. What problems

require prompt solutions in order to

move forward faster?"

Forward. Eighty-five thousand people are watching us

live right now, and you just heard

Putin, and you were probably thinking, somewhere I've

heard something familiar. Of course—it's exactly the same

thing we had with

nanotechnology: breakthrough solutions,

scientific centers all across Russia, from

Siberia to Crimea, the best scientists,

nanotechnology, Skolkovo, super-

mega-tech-nology—the same thing again. And

the old-timers remember the "energy

superpower" and so on and so forth.

When they dragged out all those crooks,

the Kovalchuk brothers, and made one of

them the head of the Academy of Sciences, they told the same

stories about amazing,

marvelous technologies.

There's nothing. Absolutely everything has collapsed, but they

keep trying to invent a miracle

pill specifically for Putin. I really

mean, it's not just that I believe it—I believe,

I'm convinced of it, because, among other things,

I have some information. But Putin is just

this strange old man

who believes in miracles. At some point he was told

this:

"Vladimir Vladimirovich, you know,

they've invented all sorts of things. They have

computers, they have factories, they produce chips,

they make, I don't know, iPhones together with

the Chinese, they churn them out. These people have breakthroughs, those

people have breakthroughs, and we, with the help of

nanotechnology—some guy told us

at an exhibition that it's possible to invent a pill

for immortality. Maybe within

nanotechnology we'll make a breakthrough and

even patch you up, since you want to

run the country for 12 years." And they started

all that nonsense with Chubais. Who else

should we put in charge? Who's our effective

manager? Chubais. Let's get Chubais. Chubais

will invent the immortality pill. And so

they spent hundreds of billions of rubles

on projects that failed completely,

just utterly—everything wrecked, everything stolen,

absolutely everything, and the end result is zero, because

they simply fed Putin a load of nonsense about

how they would invent some kind of super-

pill and cure everyone and there would be

a giant breakthrough. Of course, no

breakthrough is possible if for 20 years you've

been falling apart. It doesn't work like, you know,

there was some palace or little house and you

ran it over with a KamAZ truck, and some part of it

remained completely intact. That's not how it works. But

they keep believing, and now

some new crook has come along and

said, "Vladimir Vladimirovich, so,

things didn't work out with nanotechnology,

of course. Fine, we'll write off all those

hundreds of billions of rubles. Now we'll

move on to the genetic code, the genome, and all that,

and they fed that old man a load of nonsense with

some pseudo-scientific expressions

and that's what we'll get."

There’ll be a breakthrough, 100 percent—it won’t just be some

immortality pill; it’ll be more like

like in the movies: you plug something in and suddenly there’s a superpower,

and you’re in a Superman suit

flying over planet Earth and, I don’t know,

chasing Americans while they squeal and

hide from you. And they really believe in this.

As for Sechin, of course—I mean, Sechin

is a sly crook; naturally, he doesn’t believe

any of it, but he’s already rubbing his hands together

because wherever Putin’s daughter is involved, there will be

colossal sums of money, and you can take as much

money as you want out of this, I don’t know,

Rosneft—this oil, this petroleum

money trough. He’s already stealing from it

as much as he wants, but now you can

just

loot completely unchecked, as much as you like,

because this is the project of Putin’s geneticist

daughter. Naturally, the crafty crook

Sechin—the first thing he says, right away, is:

“Let’s do all of this

through the taxable base,” meaning

the man’s first thought is: let’s also

pay no taxes at all on this, on this

account. And you’ll soon see

an unprecedented display of generosity, when

under cover of all this talk about some kind of

scientific centers from Novosibirsk to Crimea

colossal sums will be written off, and in the end

of course nothing will come of it.

But Katerina Tikhonova’s son-in-law—that is,

the first

son-in-law of Putin’s younger daughter—has become

the youngest... And Maria Vorontsova,

Putin’s elder daughter, together with all her, I don’t

even know who her husband is,

they’re all simply going to enrich themselves

beyond measure. Let’s listen to Sechin,

who immediately starts mumbling something

about taxes, saying let’s

do something here with the taxable base...

Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich, in connection with your

instruction

on the scientific and technical program for the development of genetic

technologies, I would ask you, dear

Vladimir Vladimirovich, to support the initiatives

of the company as a technological partner

of the Federal

Scientific and Technical Program for the Development

of Genetic Technologies in the coming

years, and to consider the possibility

of excluding Rosneft’s investments in

genetic technologies from the calculation of the

taxable

base. Seriously? Rosneft, a technological

partner in genetics? Everyone finds that absolutely ridiculous.

But yes, it’s ridiculous in itself, not to mention

how wild it looks when they simply

take one separate genetics project

and discuss it now, in the middle of an epidemic,

staging an entire online meeting with

Putin, who’s sitting in his bunker, but

holding a meeting on genetics. Why?

Because it’s his daughter, his own daughter.

So she has to be given full respect, and

all the cronies around her are

rubbing their hands together because, well, there will be

absolutely unchecked and

very safe embezzlement.

A couple of people, mainly—it’s all of course

a money grab. Well, someone has to be jailed,

and they’ll jail a couple of people. We’ve seen that with

the cosmodrome (spaceport) and with all the major

construction projects. But where Putin’s daughter is involved,

of course no one will be jailed,

because these are sacred projects, and no one will be allowed

even to stammer that some money

went astray. So keep a very close eye on this.

Now, an important point about

a person who has no such

high-ranking relatives, and what’s more,

he even went to work for an

organization that enjoys absolutely no

favor from the government or

from Rosneft—the story of our Ruslan

Shaveddinov. The latest update on him is this:

he was taken somewhere—Novaya Zemlya (a remote Russian Arctic archipelago),

and he was on Novaya Zemlya in some

little village, but now he’s been taken

to this nuclear test site, literally to

the middle of nowhere, into the snow. There’s a helicopter

landing pad there and nothing else.

And Ruslan, along with several other

unfortunate people there,

spends the whole day clearing

this helicopter pad, carrying snow away

in boxes and dumping it somewhere.

Naturally, everything gets covered with snow again, and

they do this constantly. There is

absolutely no communication there, and up to this point

all of Shaveddinov’s rights are being violated.

He cannot speak either with his mother or with

his lawyers—absolutely no one. There are no

means of communication, and we cannot

pass on any belongings to him at all.

And there,

why is this segment

called “The Snow Will Soon Become Dirty”? I

was very struck when I learned

that they melt snow there and

right now they consider themselves lucky because

the snow is still clean, and they can drink melted snow

because there is no other drinking water.

But soon the snow will become dirty and unfit

for drinking, and then water will have to be carried

from the nearest source, which is located

two kilometers away. So Shaveddinov—our

lawmakers... well, it’s the kind of thing you can’t even

really describe.

Just one absurd example: there is a television there,

but no broadcasts reach it.

And when Ruslan was brought there, the local

military personnel didn’t even

know that the Russian government had changed.

That’s how isolated these people are.

One moment—Vladlen Los, our lawyer,

will explain how we tried to

We’re going to court — in other words, we’re doing what we can.

In this situation, we are constantly using the courts

to demand that Shevi at least be given back

the right to get in touch, like everyone else.

Military personnel — soldiers, privates, contract servicemen, whoever

they may be — have the full right to regularly

contact their relatives.

Shvedin has been deprived of that right for several months already.

He has been denied that right. 1 minute 7 seconds. Los

will explain.

Dino was taken from the military unit where he

was serving, to an unknown location.

Contrary to the court’s ruling, he stopped

communicating, and to all of our

official inquiries, we received no

response. We filed a lawsuit with

the Arkhangelsk Garrison Court so that

Ruslan would not be prevented from using

the telephone. Nako

is a nuclear test site and an isolated

radio-technical post. The hearing was scheduled

for May 14 on the grounds of the military unit.

You can’t just get in there — you need a pass

from the Ministry of Defense, which we

requested through the court two days before the hearing.

The Ministry of Defense refused to issue us

passes, citing the coronavirus

epidemic. We filed a motion to

postpone the proceedings. The court

rescheduled it for the 3rd.

And next time, Ruslan’s right to

defense may just as easily

be restricted by officials from the Ministry

of Defense, just as his

right to use

communications is being restricted now. I still call on everyone who

knows something, understands something, who has

someone serving there, or someone who goes

back and forth there, to get in touch with us and

tell us at least some details about

Ruslan’s life, because right now this is

our only source of information.

Some military people, decent people, who

were there, saw everything with their own

eyes, and are simply retelling to us

what is happening to him, because we still

have not had the opportunity

to contact him, and even his lawyers — well, no one,

absolutely no one can get in touch with him.

I see a lot of questions. Alex Ger asks where

to see the figures and calculations by the economists

that Lyubov Sobol referred to — right on

the Five Steps website, plus a huge

amount of material is provided there.

And there’s a major interview with Guriev,

and a huge number of posts by Konstantin

Sonin. Well, all the, I would say, prominent

economists

of Russian origin have

spoken on this subject. A lot has been written

in articles — you’ll find all these calculations there. Michael

asks why Sobchak and

Lyubov Sobol argued about payments that no one

is going to make. And Stasia Caulfield

asks: Alexei, please comment on the Sobol

–Sobchak debate. There are many, many questions on this topic.

91,000 people are watching us

live. Guys, subscribe.

Go right now to ROI. We have 91,000, and we still

need — what, probably 25,000 more, maybe

— to collect. Though I’m being told here that

apparently my wife can’t log in to the presidential

state services portal (Gosuslugi); it says the

password is incorrect. Violetta writes:

“Gosuslugi is tricky with the temporary password,”

“they send it with a delay.” Dmitry Sitnikov says, “I can’t

vote on ROI — it won’t link my email.”

Well, it’s obvious they don’t want this. I think

right now someone in the government is calling

some people at the Ministry of Communications and saying,

“Are you idiots? Why did you even allow this petition

through?” And they’re making excuses, saying, “Well,

the deadline expired, two weeks passed — actually

even three weeks passed. We’re obliged to publish it.”

But over there they’re yelling in terrifying voices

to remove it, or cut the vote count, or something else,

because of course they do not want

this petition to appear, because it is yet

another news hook for people to

discuss. And precisely in connection with these debates

which went, well, very successfully from the point

of view of, well, overall

debate as a form of political action,

which I love very much and which many of you

also love — they went just brilliantly. And

170,000 people watched them simultaneously

on three different platforms. We

broadcast them here, they were also

broadcast by Echo of Moscow, and they were broadcast

by Sobchak on her own channel, and probably

someone else restreamed them too. But at least we

know that 170,000 people

were watching at the same time. I wish my

live streams got numbers like that. I mean, it’s very cool. It

shows just how much people miss

debates. And in general, everyone watching

can see

how important political discussion is, and how it affects those in power,

and how attention to

political discussion matters. There was a question:

why Sobchak with Putin? Why did Sobchak and

Sobol discuss something Putin would never

do? But he did carry out point number

one — well, his point was number three,

but one of the five points he almost

fulfilled, including because these

debates took place, and also because there was

huge interest in them. They use various

indicators

to figure out what the people want. But for us too,

it’s interesting to know what people want and how they

will vote. Can you imagine how interested they are,

and how vitally important it is for them

to understand what we think, to understand how

they need to scheme around us, to understand how, how

to do something formally while in practice

paying no one. And in that sense, the debates

were very important. I watched them.

And, of course, Lyubov Sobol was there.

She absolutely demolished Sobchak, simply because in

that case, what was the argument against it? Well, the whole

argumentation against it, essentially from Sobchak,

the main argument boiled down to

several points: that it was populism, and now

after Putin has already carried out

one of the points from our five-step plan, they

are no longer talking about it anymore; now it is no longer populism.

It is completely normal. Second: why do you

want to give Sechin 20,000 rubles?

Let's take a look. Sobchak, with this

argument of hers that she kept repeating endlessly,

we are not going to answer why Sechin needs

20,000 rubles. I repeat, this is also a direct quote from Alexei

Navalny from an interview with Echo of Moscow

where he is asked, "Does Sechin need it too?

20,000?" "Yes, Sechin too. Well, I think Sechin

will be pleased to receive from Navalny

20,000 rubles." Well, this line of

argument is laughable, obviously. Yes, of course, you do not

want to give Sechin 20,000 rubles. But much

more than that, you want

another 146 million people to receive 20,000 rubles each. In that sense, I

am ready to give it to Sechin too, and

everyone understands that, and the polls that

were held on every platform showed that, well,

absolutely no one found this argument

convincing. And, well, of course, the weakness

of Sobchak's position. And, frankly, her

whatever polite word one might choose,

she is not very smart, and most often

when you saw her doing

an interview with someone, that person

there was, well, a direct connection between the microphone and

her mouth. There are a lot of jokes about this

among the journalists who work with her.

That is, she constantly has

someone in her earpiece who simply

tells her what to say. And in that sense,

she is quite a unique person

because she has mastered this skill very

well; it is not so easy to sit there with an earpiece

in your ear. For example, I find it difficult if

the director is telling me something, so I

never have an earpiece because

when they are saying something

it distracts you. You have to think of something,

rephrase it somehow, whereas she just has

a completely direct, direct

connection there, and without that earpiece

nothing works for her anymore. And in particular,

for some reason she brought up again the argument about

which I told you in the previous

program. I said that Sobchak would

lie that she was the first, and that is how she

began her debate. Well, because

no other argument occurred to her.

"23 seconds. I am against lies and

distortions, which, unfortunately, you, in

particular, Lyubov Eduardovna, engage in.

You engage in it. You know, you are like

political Chinese: you take other people's

ideas, modify them somehow,

and not only pass them off as your own,

but also accuse everyone around you

of distorting things."

"Political Chinese stole the idea." Well,

you can argue endlessly about whose idea it was first,

but in essence

there are absolutely no substantive arguments

against this idea; it is impossible to argue against it

in any truly rational and

thoughtful way, because a substantive

argument is an argument. Here, for example,

someone asked on Navalny's Politician program, and

a person with this name asks:

"Alexei, good evening. Putin is handing out

10,000 rubles. Won't that be followed by inflation?

Will everything get more expensive?" The answer is no. Many calculations

have been made on this subject. No, all economists

who understand macroeconomics

say no: neither from 10,000 nor from

20,000 rubles for each person will inflation

increase at all. And that same

well-known economist Konstantin Sonin

published a post not only on this topic

well, quite a long post, effectively

an article, saying that this epidemic, and in general

this crisis, will not cause inflation.

In general, this is very important for understanding

whether direct assistance can be provided

or whether direct assistance cannot be provided.

Therefore, essentially, all

the substantive, important arguments, well,

each of us really does think about this:

can we really hand out

20,000 rubles to everyone right now? Will there be enough

money? Will there be inflation? Will

the country go bankrupt? These are valid questions,

valid questions. They have all been discussed, and

there are answers to them, including on our

Five Steps website, and so all that remains

to argue about, all the arguments one can

argue with, are some kind of nonsense on the subject

of whether Sechin also gets 20,000 rubles. And now

it is especially difficult because Putin

has started giving 10,000 rubles per child, and then

the question arises: what, should Sechin's

children get 20,000 too, and Putin's grandchildren

10,000, and everyone else as well? Well,

already the Kremlin propagandists have, as it were,

run into this part of the issue: that rich people also

have children, and they can apply, or they can choose not to

apply for these 10,000. It was actually

quite striking; I noticed it because sometimes you have

to pay attention because sometimes you have to

immerse yourself in the amazing life

of insects, dive to the bottom like in the film

*Parasite*, go down to the bottom, and there at the bottom we discover

a person who used to swim fairly

high up and was quite

important. There are two such marginal figures

I want to talk with you about.

There is an opinion that, really, why even

talk about them, because they are marginal

and ridiculous, and instead we should be discussing

more interesting topics. But this is very

Amusingly, and it seemed telling to me that

even this sort of servant class of the authorities

at the lower levels, looking at these

debates, this discussion—well, in fact it was

interesting. Whether Sobchak was good or bad,

she did agree to these debates, she agreed,

she took part, there was a whole saga around it

about whether she would agree or not, and the host there,

there was an argument over whether the host judged fairly. I

think she was very fair, and many

thanks to Echo of Moscow and Tatyana

Felgengauer

for the live broadcast. Overall, it was watched by

several million people—great. And so

all of this—if we then look down to the bottom, we

will see how these nasty little

servants of the authorities, who also want

somehow to take part in politics, they too

are like: well, debates—we want that too,

it’s cool to somehow feel involved in

this life, because it’s boring just

to collect a salary and sit in some

obscurity at Russia Today or somewhere there in

some kind of irrelevant

part of United Russia—they also really

want in on it, and

and the biggest

and the biggest fans of watching these

parasites at the bottom were just, with

crying emojis, forwarding me

a funny Telegram discussion between

the former leader of Moscow’s United

Russia, Andrei Metelsky. Why did I

say earlier that this fish used to swim

quite high up? Well now it has

sunk to the bottom, because lately

he’s been driven out from everywhere thanks to

Smart Voting; he was kicked out, and now he

is desperately trying to claw his way back somewhere, and

doing some very strange things,

for example recording some video about

how masks should be worn—we’ll look at it later

in the section about

how the regime is being introduced across Russia, well, that is,

he’s trying to attract some attention

to himself. In particular, he was walking around

his district and staging PR events; he was helping

families in need. Let’s watch: 1

minute 23 seconds. For more than a month already,

United Russia, United Russia volunteers,

have been working in the city, helping

Muscovites on weekends, holidays, and on

ordinary

days. We believe this is our civic

duty; we believe this is our important and

responsible work. United Russia was,

is, and will remain the party that will

protect

Muscovites. Of course, it’s probably easier

to make accusations while lying on the couch. But we call on

everyone, all political forces, all

political organizations, everyone who

cares: come and let’s help

our neighbors. I would like to say

thank you to everyone for not abandoning us in this

difficult time and for continuing to support us, just as

in ordinary times. I want to express my heartfelt

gratitude for the help and the

support provided. We are doing the right thing. And

thank you to Muscovites for their understanding and

[music]

support. Help your

loved ones, and most importantly, if you

need help, call

us. What heart-rending music.

Help the doctors, call us. 95,000 people are

watching us live, and together we are

observing the life of bottom-dwellers,

bottom-dwelling admirers of the authorities and its

supporters. So then, Metelsky

put out this rather nauseating video on

his Telegram channel, where it was seen by

hardly anyone, basically

the main audience for this video was, well,

the person who had just seen it and challenged him

to a debate. Guess who? Remember that

girl who, basically,

became famous—she formally calls herself

a journalist. She works for Russia Today, but

she became known after there was

a rally organized by the mayor’s office itself

against the mayor’s office, against the renovation program; it was

a rally specially staged in order to

break up this large movement of Muscovites.

I also went to that rally, I too

went there,

with my family, and there I was taken away by

the police.

Naturally, that became what everyone discussed, rather than

what was being said from the stage, and online

there circulated a video of Katya Vinokurova sobbing

and saying that everything had been so good

until Navalny showed up. Let’s recall that

video, because everything had been so good

until Navalny appeared. Everything had been so

great. And so, basically, Vinokurova

she works, she is one of

them—I mean, one of those parasites who

are there. And so, she also wants

it too—Sobol and Sobchak are sparring, discussing

some kind of programs, so she needed something too, and she

decided to go after this

Metelsky. And then between them there

followed a hilarious little scene.

Katya Vinokurova writes him an address,

saying: you, Metelsky, a United Russia member, are doing a bad job

you are shamelessly doing PR off the residents

of Izmailovo; you are not a resident of Izmailovo at all,

you do not live there, and in general you are putting

the residents at risk. After that, Metelsky,

who also—well, a former leader, he

is probably still the formal leader

of Moscow’s United Russia—but you’ve been

thrown out from everywhere, no one pays

any attention to you anymore, so he also needs to take part in

some kind of political discussion

and he records a video for her on

Telegram where he shows his passport and

He says he lives in the Eastern District.

Let's

take a look. Good evening, Katya, I decided

to record a video message for you. First of all,

I want to say just a little bit: as the secretary of the Moscow

city organization of the United

Russia party, so this is almost a joke already. Although—

jokes aside—you wanted to talk to me,

well then, come to my

party office, we'll sort everything out, and I'll answer

all the questions that

interest you. Yes, you wanted to become a deputy,

well, that's possible too. Go through

the preliminary voting procedure,

the so-called primary. Prove that you are

better, and we will nominate you in the 205th electoral

district. What's more, then I won't have to

make any financial contributions or

take any other steps—the party will

support you. Katya, so don't be shy,

come by, we don't bite. One more thing I'd

like to tell you: I've lived for a long time in

the Eastern District. To prove it, I'm showing you

my passport, look. So, Katya, I

live in the Eastern District, so good evening,

neighbor.

What a video message, huh.

There are only a few dozen people so far, but it's important for me to show

just how much even these people want it—they have

a pull toward public politics. And in

fact, how much they have this kind of

simple, cynical attitude. The guy just

says, well, come join us in United

Russia and we'll make you a deputy—you won't even

have to spend any money. Too bad he didn't

say the most important line, because

everyone else will pay for you with their money. Well,

and then they kept challenging each other, very

amusingly, to debates, and then Yekaterina

Vinokurova, for her part, recorded

the following video for him.

Andrei Nikolaevich,

Metelsky, you can wave

around

your passport all you want. We still haven't seen

whether you are actually a resident of our district. First of all, you

created a crowd, which

is a violation of every possible public health rule,

yes. That is, instead of helping

families, you created a threat of infecting them.

second,

back in the fall, in response to my

proposal to simply talk,

you sent back the reply: I don't know who you are.

Well then, I'm glad you stopped being

a deputy, because you are a unique kind of

deputy—one who did nothing for us,

did not take part in the life of our

district, and never helped us in any way at all.

Please, I am asking you very much: right now, do not

violate our sanitary and

epidemiological safety measures. That's all, thank you.

Come on, don't tell me this isn't adorable. When I

was watching this, I mean, this is

really something: two people standing at the same

feeding trough. There it is, the trough. Here they go—

budget money—they bend down into it,

they eat from it, and then they

say to each other, sort of sweetly, let's cut each

other down, challenge each other to debates. Then there was

a long saga. I'll just show you one more

video from Yekaterina Vinokurova. Well,

just, simply—

adorable. And the second point: yes, I'm trying

to stop touching my badly cut

bangs with my

hands, like all Muscovites. So then,

Andrei Nikolaevich, first: please, once again,

stop dragging an entourage around behind you.

Just stop.

Stop. Second: stop

waving your passport around, because you

have nothing to do with our district or with

its problems,

at all.

Leave our district to us—to Muscovites, to us,

the residents of our neighborhood and our

district. And really, if you have any

conscience at all, then you simply should not be going to the State Duma (the lower house of Russia's parliament)

at all. Thank you very much.

Well, I think half the

viewers are melting right now, and the other half

have thrown up on their laptop keyboards, but

in fact it's important to remember that both one and

the other are people who get money from

us. Vinokurova, in the literal sense of the word,

is a journalist on state

television; Metelsky is a United Russia member. So

these are people we pay money to. I mean,

I'm just amazed—they are still

arranging debates, and it's so sweet

to watch how they—they want to be in politics,

they also

want to respect themselves, and later they want

to tell their children and grandchildren that

you know, we took part in

political battles, we faced off once

in debates. I propose that Vinokurova and

Metelsky hold a debate—right here, even

on the Navalny Live channel. We will give you

an audience; lots of people will watch you.

Come and argue about something, anything at all.

We're all for debates. A lot of people write saying,

let's have more debates, more debates,

organize them. I'd do nothing but organize them.

I keep telling Sobol: Lyuba, let's

do new debates. But first of all,

technically it's not always easy to do, and

second,

representatives of the authorities most often simply

refuse. We can put together as many

pairs of various liberals here as we want,

very liberal ones or

half-liberals, because right now they don't

have all that much to argue about

these days. What you really want, though,

is for people to disagree, for them to have

different views on what's happening—then it

An interesting debate. Well, we’ll try—maybe

we’ll manage to achieve something.

But in any case, this discussion is

super important, and this conversation is super important

for putting pressure on the authorities, however

strange that may look or sound.

It may seem odd that Sobol and Sobchak were arguing on Echo

of Moscow (a Russian radio station), but the pressure was felt by Putin, who

sits in the Kremlin, because even judging by

the number of viewers, it was clear that this was

the number one issue, and there was no way around it. And

when the authorities have no way out and they

understand that they have to do at least something,

they will take the first step—and Putin did take

the first step. And yes, let me praise him for that.

He did absolutely the right thing. We want

more—we want all

Five Steps to be carried out, so sign up right

now. 95,000 people are watching us

live, and we still need 71,000 votes.

We’ve already collected a lot, guys—we just need a little more.

Just a little more—please don’t be lazy,

vote, those of you who haven’t

voted yet on the Five Steps website.

Go there and vote, because, well,

every vote is like a small, you know,

red flag that we are lining up

in front of the Russian government and personally

in front of Putin, so that they understand that

if you want to get out of this situation

and preserve at least some approval rating, you have to

give people money—and they have now. And

thanks to our campaign, we forced

the authorities, and 27 million Russian families will receive

at least some help: 10,000 rubles (about $110) per

child. The conditions are rather strange,

in terms of how they were set up:

[music]

from age three to fifteen inclusive. Well,

naturally, everyone is writing: what, does a two-year-old not

need money? And at 16, do they not

need it? Do they not need to be fed? It’s a strange

thing. I mean, it’s clear why: because

they still want to hand out as little money as

possible. But now they are already paying out

a substantial amount—many, many

billions of rubles from the reserve fund,

which, strictly speaking,

is meant for exactly this purpose, and they could

spend much more without any risk of

inflation. So we need to keep up the pressure.

This is very important. Let’s look at what

Putin said about this

10,000-ruble (about $110) payment per child: “Starting June 1

of this year, there will be

a one-time payment of 10,000 rubles

for every child from age 3 until

they turn 16. And I want

to emphasize: right now, people are in no position

to be collecting certificates

and official extracts, so we made, in my view,

the right and fair decision: for

receiving this one-time assistance, we will not

introduce any formal

criteria. Right now, there can be only

one

condition: everyone must receive assistance,”

everyone who needs it. I repeat: every

Russian family with children aged

3 to 15 inclusive will be able to apply for

this kind of

one-time

assistance.” It was so satisfying to watch that.

Well, in fact, I really do think

that it’s important to say here that Putin

made the right decision. Yes, we pushed him into it,

but that, essentially, is what

politics is: people, voters, force

a politician’s hand, and he makes

a decision, while they pressure him

from different sides so that it is the right one. And

look at the rhetoric: assistance must

be given to everyone. That is literally what we

were saying. Before that, they told us,

through the words of Siluanov, Nabiullina, Gref,

and everyone else: what do you mean, help for everyone?

That’s nonsense. No such help. Sobchak was saying

the same thing too: what do you mean, help for everyone? It should be targeted

to the middle class or to some specific groups, but

you can’t give it to everyone, because that would be

helicopter money—horrible, horrible, horrible—and they’d

just be throwing it around. But it turned out

that none of that was true, and it turned out that

there is, and I was asking everyone there how,

how easy or difficult the application process was.

Yes, the Gosuslugi website (Russia’s public services portal) did crash at first.

In the early months, incidentally, we

spent many billions of rubles on it,

and the person who built

that public services website is now

serving as Russia’s communications minister. So

that man clearly has very clumsy hands, but

even so, they are now accepting these

applications. There have been some incidents, like

for example in

Stavropol, where there was video of people standing

outside the Pension Fund office in order to

get a SNILS number (Russia’s personal insurance account number). Let’s watch 30

seconds of it—and there they all are, yes, I’m filming it.

As I understand it, these incidents are still

isolated, and connected with the fact that there are

quite a lot of people who

basically never got a SNILS number

and don’t understand how to get one, so they

ran to these Pension Fund offices. Right now

everyone’s applications are being accepted—or at least, for the most part, they are being accepted

fairly well. And this also proves the point:

they told us that no such

proper system existed through which money could be given

to everyone. But they managed it. More than that, they even managed

to carve out the age bracket from 3 to 15—it would have been much easier

to pay everyone from 0 to 18, which is what

we proposed. But they managed even under a more

complicated system, nevertheless, to accept applications from everyone.

Why are they doing this? Because

there is public pressure. Without public pressure,

they won’t do a damn thing. And we

can see that, incidentally, right now, with

some benefits that had supposedly been promised to small

businesses, preferential payroll loans

and so on. Because yes, Putin came out

and made promises, but as the saying goes, you can wait three years for what’s promised, and

if there’s no public pressure, even some

supposedly sacred things that he

stood there swearing by—they simply

don’t get carried out. Right now there’s this whole saga going on, and once again

it’s starting up with the adoption of this

Constitution. And remember when all of this

was being passed, and they explained to us that it was necessary

to do some super important things, while

tucked inside was this little thing

about extending Putin’s terms in office—but supposedly very important

one of those very important things was

hot meals for schoolchildren, and there was a whole

big saga about how finally Vladimir

Vladimirovich, right there in the Constitution, we

would write that our children should be given hot meals, or at least

something warm for breakfast at

schools, because this was a breakthrough, a

grand breakthrough for Russia. And everyone

said, finally, thank God. And then

you’d think that such a measure—an odd one, really,

which, for example, already existed in Moscow—and

which really should have been adopted

long ago as a matter of course—they would surely be able

to implement it. Let’s remember how Putin

talked about these free meals

for schoolchildren: in this connection, I propose

to provide free hot meals

to all primary school students from the first

through fourth

grade. What applause. I’d play you

more of that video if I could—just the entire

United Russia party finally celebrating this “brilliant idea.”

And what happened next? Well, our headquarters in Irkutsk

simply published the response sent by

the regional government, the Ministry of

Education, and it says in plain language

that, guys, at the present time

the Irkutsk Region cannot provide this

and all these efforts related to

school meals have been postponed until September 1, 2022.

Do you understand? Some kind of—good Lord—

well, you don’t want to call them lousy children’s meals, but

let’s be honest, not especially

expensive school meals—for the Irkutsk

Region, where not long ago they forced

the governor to resign. The governor

was a Communist, so apparently he was

the problem. And now a United Russia politician is there again

running everything, and the Irkutsk Region—

energy, industry—it’s a super

developed region. You’d think everything there

should be fine, and yet they can’t

provide these miserable hot meals

because in Russia, in order to get what you’ve been promised,

you have to fight for it.

You have to sink your teeth into it and

drag it out. If you don’t drag it out, well,

then that’s it—those hot meals just

dissolve somewhere among the many, many, many

many other promises made to businesses.

They promised them something there—there was a great post

about it. Even Sberbank is already causing outrage; all

these reposts came from the owner of

a St. Petersburg chain of stores, coffee shops, and the

Sever-Metropol confectionery company

Elena Shevchenko. She simply published

a list of how many documents Sberbank

demanded from her in order for them

to issue this payroll loan.

There were 33 items. Do you understand? You need

to drag in a separate accountant just so they can

collect all these documents. Let me point out

for those who maybe aren’t following very closely or

aren’t aware: this is not

for the sake of giving you some

interest-free loan worth a bazillion

dollars, and not so they can simply give

you a large amount on favorable terms.

This is so they can give you a repayable

loan calculated at 12,000 rubles per

employee—maybe a little more in St. Petersburg

because it’s based on the subsistence minimum, on the

minimum wage. In other words, for them to give you

just

peanuts, you have to come up with 33 documents.

So why is it set up this way? So that

it becomes impossible: you bring them in,

they say more, more, more—and eventually you give up

or you’ve already gone bankrupt by that point,

because if they just promised you something,

they’ll never simply give you anything. Exactly the same

thing with doctors. You’d think that now,

with the epidemic, doctors are overwhelmed. When, on one of the

programs a couple of months

ago, I was discussing with you here the fact that doctors needed

protective equipment, it seemed

like something exotic, and nobody really understood what

we meant, because nobody was talking

about it. Now everyone is talking. We

demanded that doctors be paid more, but

we supported the union, the union demanded it,

and now absolutely everyone is talking about it.

Putin came out and basically said, I swear, we’ll do everything,

everyone will get their payments. But you can see the whole

internet is flooded with pay slips showing that

someone was paid 500 rubles

credited, someone else 200 rubles

credited, even though they said everyone working

with COVID would get an 80,000-ruble bonus. They

recalculate it by the hour and by the

minute and end up paying no one. In Nizhny

Novgorod, at the Sormovo ambulance substation, people

the ambulance doctors are simply holding

an impromptu meeting because

they aren’t being paid, and they’re being forced to work with

COVID patients. But never mind—Putin promised it,

so let him pay you. A meeting like that takes place,

34 seconds long, and damn it, you have to go to

members of parliament, make a fuss,

to the Investigative Committee,

you have to contact the prosecutor’s office, the Investigative

Committee, write complaints—otherwise they say, we don’t have

any such

orga...

the Nizhny Novgorod administration

they wrote to the administration

the president, yes, and the administration passes it down to you

and now the health minister says

of the Nizhny Novgorod Region, named David

Melik-Huseynov has already said it—what do you think

what did he say? That these people were right

to gather, and that we are paying them their wages

No, he told them that this was a provocation and

a paid hit job. Well, I mean, sure, of course

someone deliberately went there, damn it, you see

to the Sormovo ambulance substation as provocateurs, they

were sitting at home thinking, what kind of

provocation should we stage? Let's go to the

Sormovo district and gather there at the substation

to demand the extra payment that actually

is supposedly being paid. I mean, seriously, the guy comes out

and says, we've paid everyone the full amount

of it. Provocation... I'm just saying that

first of all, these doctors are doing the right thing, and I

think that all medical workers across the country right now

simply should just

go on strike. Of course, they must continue

to provide medical care to people, but

they should strike in the sense of making public statements

expressing outrage, holding meetings, because

they won't give anything. Right now they promise something during

this period, but as soon as things start

to die down—we'll talk now about how

they fake that decline—you'll get not a ruble

not even a kopeck. So right now we need to

grab hold of this government and demand that they

pay out. And that is exactly why I urge you

to subscribe. 96,000 people are watching us

live—subscribe to Rai

subscribe to Five Steps. Invite more

people. We have collected half a million signatures

so far across all platforms. We managed to get them to

carry it out—well, partially. They fulfilled one

demand. Once there are 10 million, they won't

be able to go anywhere. They—they will fulfill all five

points, including paying 20,000 rubles (about 20,000 RUB)

to every adult for April and May

Because the money exists, but they will

only give it out if we force them into

a very narrow corridor where there are only two

options: either you pay and preserve some

approval rating, or nothing

will be left of it. United Russia will get

zero votes in the vote on the

constitution; you'll have to

falsify 100% of the votes because

no one will vote. A mass campaign

is underway, this is very important, and you shouldn't, well,

underestimate your personal contribution to all this

because, well, if they do anything

only for themselves—well, they

think rationally in their own interests, they will do

anything. I saw a very funny video

that came up this week about

cadets—cadets, well, schoolkids

just kids studying at a military school

they got into the State Duma, went

into the cafeteria, looked at the prices, and were just

amazed at how all this works. Fourteen seconds

we are in the cafeteria of the State

Duma. Take a look at the

prices for the people's elected

representatives. That's a life, huh?

Gentlemen, I mean, the Speaker of the State Duma

Volodin and the other deputies have built for themselves

a little paradise, but when they are asked

the question, guys, let's

give our people money like they do in the U.S.—it

just twists them up when they hear that in Europe they give it, in

the U.S. they give it, they give it everywhere—they really

can't stand it, and they start inventing some

completely absurd arguments. When

Volodin was told, give like in the U.S., he

just starts saying, well, what do you mean, like in

the U.S.? Do you know that there, supposedly, you need

to pay $72,000 to be put on a

ventilator? I mean, he just makes up

whatever nonsense comes to mind just to explain why

they shouldn't pay, because if you ask him

why a salad there costs

12 rubles, he'll find an equally

plausible explanation, make something

up—and here he'll just as easily lie

about why there's no need to pay. Let's watch 40 seconds

and when we are talking, among other things, about

providing citizens in these countries with

financial assistance, my friends, we must

admit that financial assistance should

solve a specific problem for people. In the

United States of America, the problem

is

today the accessibility of

medical treatment, accessibility of, if you

like, those same machines

for artificial lung ventilation (ventilators)

staying on those machines for two weeks

costs $72,000, while

citizens are being given

$1,000 each, you understand? He just completely

pulled that number out of thin air. I mean,

of course in America no one was denied access to

a ventilator until they took

$72,000 from every homeless person, and in return gave them $1,000

—he's just making it up. But the real

situation of Russia's residents is explained to Volodin and to all

of us by Yana Khanova from

Angarsk. I saw this video, and we

published it on May 9, and May 9 is

a holiday—great, truly a great

holiday—and all the endless officials

keep talking about how our grandfathers and

great-grandfathers died so that, well, and then

comes the usual list: so there would be peaceful skies

over our heads, so that the fascist

plague, and so on and so forth

and among other things, they said, so that

people could live decently. And it's very

important to realize, damn it, that these things are also

connected: that in 2020, in Russia,

there really are people who

record video appeals saying that

they have nothing to eat, and that this too is somehow

This has to do with the fact that our grandfathers died so that

videos like the one I’m about to show you

— 1 minute 37 seconds long — simply would not

exist. Hello, my name is Yana Khanova.

I’m from the city of Angarsk, Irkutsk Region.

Our town is small and not well known,

especially not in Moscow, and probably even less so

to Vladimir Vladimirovich, our

“respected,” in

quotation marks. The fact is that in our city

the situation is catastrophic.

Because we are in self-isolation,

since there is now a coronavirus pandemic,

I was simply forced

to resign from

my job. We have two children, and

we live in rented

housing. We have no money to pay the rent.

There is no money, there is nothing to eat. I am forced

to turn to charitable

foundations so they can at least help with

oil, pasta, buckwheat, rice, because

I have nothing to feed my

children.

[music]

And I can’t get

a job anywhere because everything is closed, and individual entrepreneurs

are selling off their

businesses, and things like that.

We will most likely soon be

kicked out of our rented place as well.

There will be nowhere to go, nothing to

eat, that’s all. Thank you very much.

Vladimir

Vladimirovich, 999,000 people are watching us live,

and of course someone will say

something like: well, listen, this is Yana Khanova, she

must have done something wrong herself. Well,

she should have had some job, maybe

something more stable, saved something up.

She’s an adult, after all — children, a rented

apartment — she should have put something aside,

and so on. Probably Yana Khanova

did something in her life — including some things

that didn’t work out very well, maybe somewhere she

was unlucky. But Yana Khanova, like everyone

else, damn it, lives in a country with

100 dollar billionaires. She

lives in a country with enormous amounts

of oil and gas, and some of that belongs to her — simply

by birthright, if you like. That

privilege belongs to Yana Khanova, to you, to

Sechin, to Putin, to everyone else.

The privilege is that some part

of these enormous oil and gas revenues belongs

to her as well. So this is not about

Yana Khanova buying

a Bentley or a yacht like Sechin or

Usmanov, or a huge house being built

by all of Putin’s relatives, friends, neighbors,

and former colleagues. No — she is simply saying:

there is no food. And so Yana Khanova should

be the reason for this whole push, so that

we can say: guys, we need to fight for people like

Yana Khanova. And people who

have been luckier — maybe you do not

need these thousands, but you still need

to stand up so that everyone gets them, because

that is the right policy, it is

social justice, and overall it is

the country’s development. In general, because

right now everyone is asking for help, and things will get worse for everyone; we

are sliding backward. And our “Five Steps” campaign

is this campaign because we want us to

slide backward less, at a slower pace at least,

and preferably

move forward at least a little. This

is very important. 999,000 people are watching live.

We only have a few more

signatures left to collect, so please

go and vote right now. So,

I see a lot of questions, such as this one from

Kantsler Gorchakova: “Tell us about the Khachaturyan sisters.”

The authorities still cannot seem to

leave those unfortunate girls alone, even though the fact

of self-defense has already been recognized, as far as I

understand. I saw reports in the media that their case was to

be reclassified — or rather, not even reclassified:

the Investigative Committee

and the prosecutor’s office acknowledged the fact that

they really had been subjected to abuse

and violence over a long

period of time. But nevertheless,

they continue to be charged with intentional

murder rather than killing in self-defense.

But I have stated my position here many times.

All these videos that

were recorded inside the family, and then all those

investigative reenactments — they are

impossible to watch. I mean, those children,

those unfortunate girls, were subjected

to years of abuse,

at the hands of their father, and they could

do absolutely nothing. They were

completely dependent, and of course the fact

that in the end they, I don’t know, started

stabbing him with a knife — that was the most

genuine self-defense, because there was

no other way for them to defend themselves except

to attack him while he was asleep.

Because they were small, miserable,

broken-down girls, and there was simply

a big sadistic father. In that sense, I

stand by what I’ve said and believe — I mean,

of course a lot of other things are happening now,

but this should not be abandoned either.

Mekom asks me: “Alexei, what

is this? Tell us about the Russian

ventilators — are they defective?” This is

truly some kind of national

disgrace. More than that, it is some completely

hellish story. Russian ventilators

are produced at a Rostec plant, and these

ventilators are in short supply everywhere.

And remember, I explained here in detail

how they were sent to America with great fanfare,

and then it turned out

that now tragic, terrible things have happened.

There were cases in Moscow—one person died, and in

St. Petersburg, I think, five people died. Because

these ventilators, these AIVL machines, catch fire

plain and simple. I mean, they

were defective. They’ve all been withdrawn now, they’re

no longer being used. And it turned out that,

besides that, it became clear that our

our

Rostec, whose director owns

an apartment worth 5 billion rubles (about $55 million) overlooking

Red Square, is incapable of producing

a lousy ventilator. It’s not exactly a very complicated

piece of technology, let’s be honest.

They said they had donated some of these AIVL machines

to America, and then

it turned out they had sold them to America.

Then, when it became clear that they catch fire,

the Americans said they would not

use them. And by the way, they hadn’t even

used them.

Why? Because our voltage is

220 volts, while in America it’s, what,

110 or 120. So basically,

they gave them something that

couldn’t be used—and on top of that, it catches fire.

I mean, this is just

of course—this is genuinely very embarrassing.

It’s very embarrassing, very shameful. And against that backdrop,

it’s wild to listen to all these Putin-style

talking points. In the first half of the program, I

was talking about the Great Plan

for genetic centers from

[place omitted in source] to Crimea, which will be run by Putin’s daughter.

What genetic centers? If you

can’t even produce ventilators, where there are

basically just pumps and tubes

and not much else,

then what are we even talking about? Right, as for what I think about canceling

the OGE and postponing the Unified State Exam (Russia’s national school exam), I’m not going to comment yet.

I need to talk to various people

about it first, because I’m just afraid

that if I jump in now with some opinion of my own,

I’ll just blurt something out and then you’ll laugh at me.

[music]

Ring on the way asks:

“Alexei, what do you think

about the government not making payments for

16-year-olds and 17-year-olds? Are they

children? Are they not children, or do they not eat?” Well, as I

already said, this is complete nonsense. It’s

totally unclear why: from 0 to 18, they are children.

By law, they are children, and therefore each of them

should receive 10,000 rubles (about $110). Putin

is simply lowballing it. Apparently they calculated that

if they only include the younger ones and

leave out the older kids, they’ll have to pay out

much more money otherwise, and consequently

Igor

Ivanovich Sechin and the rest of the gang will have much less to steal.

That’s why they’re allocating only a little.

So this needs to be fought for—it’s very

important. Right.

Oru asks: “Alexei, what do you think about

mass antibody testing of Muscovites for

coronavirus antibodies?”

As I understand it, it still won’t be

universal—that is, it won’t be mandatory.

So it’s not like what Nikita

Mikhalkov was afraid of, that they’d drag all of us off for

some kind of

tests and implant chips in us. No, it’s

selective and voluntary—you’ll be able to

come in and take an antibody test. Well, I, I

don’t know what it will actually be like, what kind of

tests they’ll use, whether they’ll be reliable or not. From

the Moscow city government, I expect anything,

up to and including the possibility that this will be

a completely fake exercise and they’ll simply steal

money through it. But overall, the fact that they’re

at least saying they will do

more testing is, of course, very

good. And we have a huge, enormous number

of questions about the police, because

basically right now the authorities are doing this thing where,

under cover of all this virus chaos, under

cover of the fact that, well, basically nothing

is clear—because really, nothing is clear.

What’s happening? Everyone is discussing how Putin

made a speech and said he was lifting these

measures, after which he handed everything over to the regions,

and, well, overall nothing was understandable.

Let’s actually take a look at Putin

and how he spoke and said that he

was stopping the extension of

self-isolation: “Today, May 11, the previously announced

period of non-working days expires.

“In total, starting from March 30, it

lasted more than six

weeks. This extraordinary measure

made it possible

to slow down the development

of the epidemic. All the measures that

I mentioned earlier allow us to move on to

the next stage of fighting the epidemic.”

And nobody understood what had happened. There were

a lot of jokes, but honestly—even I,

I mean, I’m a lawyer, I follow this closely,

I sat there watching, and then when it

ended, it was like: so, can we go for a walk or

not? Well, I can see there are more people

on the streets, the parking lot at the business center was packed

the next day, but overall

it was genuinely unclear. I saw a great notice

that people were posting

on Facebook. Let’s really put it up

and see whether it’s possible to understand what’s

written here. Show us,

please. Remove the questions from the screen

so I can see it. “In full accordance with

the president’s directive, Moscow will

carry out further strengthening of the suspension

of the introduction of quarantine measures with the preservation of the cancellation

of wages in the event of non-attendance

by company employees...” As far as I

understand, this isn’t a comedy bit, it isn’t

some kind of parody—this is actually

one of those real notices, and

it really is just incomprehensible—nobody can understand it.

understands what kind of regime the country is under right now, what

you’re allowed to do and what you’re not. Why

are governors making the decisions, and, well, the authorities

Putin isn’t exactly delegating

responsibility — he’s hiding from

responsibility. He’s sitting in a bunker, he

hardly sees anyone, and he wants

as few decisions as possible to be made

by him personally, because the consequences of those

decisions can be completely different. What if they turn out

bad? Better for me to do

nothing. In that sense, he’s no

Supreme Commander-in-Chief at all, just

a frightened old man in a bunker. Right

now, 100,000 people are watching live.

Hooray. I’m very glad, and I want to shame

all those who still haven’t voted

on Rai. So anyway,

out of this strange uncertainty,

everyone is seriously, every single day,

in every conversation, discussing with each

other that it’s unclear what’s happening with

this virus, the authorities have tried — you know,

they were handed a lemon, and from those lemons

they need to make lemonade, and that lemonade

consists of the fact that they are simultaneously

pushing our

life — certain aspects of our lives — into

a long-term framework, if we don’t actively

resist it. That means the new law on

elections and the new amendments to the Law on

Police — they’re going all in there. That

is, basically, the adoption of these

amendments to the police law — people here are

asking a lot about them, actually —

finally turns Russia into

a police state. Even now, in

fact, it already is a police

state, because, well, you may have

rights — they’re written into law — but

the courts will never protect you, and you

can’t file a complaint against anyone except in very

rare cases, basically, even despite

the fact that the law is on your side. You

can sue, you can at least right now

write that they violated such-and-such

provisions of the law, but you’re unlikely to win.

And now even formally, this, this

applies even less

to people like me, to political

activists, political figures, because

well, no laws really apply

to me anyway. But still, for

most ordinary citizens who

don’t get involved in politics, it was hard

to imagine that tomorrow the cops would simply

smash a car window and start

searching the car — what they call

an inspection — and you wouldn’t be able

to do anything. Now that’s possible.

Before, an ordinary citizen could hardly

imagine that a police officer could simply

— and as we can see, the police

have been behaving super strangely lately,

I mean, they’re behaving absolutely

absurdly, even right now while they still don’t have

any special powers, but nevertheless

again, I’m not going to show you 20 videos

like I did on previous

broadcasts, but look at this one

video of a man being detained. Where was it,

in Zelenodolsk. A man was riding on a

bus without a mask — look how they drag him out of

that bus. Good Lord, in that

Zelenodolsk, just yesterday absolutely everyone

was without masks, and still is without

masks, but they saw one person and had to

tick their boxes — look how they drag that

poor guy. Let’s watch. We’ve got it too, guys, well—

Yeah, we’ll go in a mask — no, there are tissues, well—

there are wet wipes, do they replace

masks? What? They don’t replace anything. They do, actually—

really. What are you doing, guys? You’re being

filmed — this will be shown on the internet later.

Why are you doing this? Last name? I’ll get out, I’ll

get out. Don’t touch me, I

will get out. A criminal, as if he’d killed

someone.

What did he do, what?

Please, let go. Step back, I’m telling you.

You—

They’re going to work, guys, to work.

The boys are going to

work.

No need — calm down. Please.

Put on a mask — well, they’ll buy masks now.

What are you doing? Come on, please.

Let them go. Did they kill someone or what?

Look.

I mean, they’re swine, scumbags, and fascists.

There are absolutely no other words for it. Go ahead and sue

me in your Zelenodolsk for

insulting government representatives while

on duty — they really are scumbags and

fascists. Over a mask, they’re wrenching his arms behind his back, and

he’s screaming that it hurts, and they’re dragging him off somewhere.

And right now they actually have no

grounds for this at all. And these amendments

that are being passed now, under cover of the

fact that no one is really watching

or paying attention and we’re all trying

to understand what’s happening, they’re simply

untieing

the police’s hands. I mean,

you could do a long legal analysis. I

won’t torture you with all that

legal mumbo-jumbo, but overall

the idea is that everything there is now being made

as vague as possible so that

the police have the greatest possible

number of grounds to do whatever they want, and

it’s all written in such a way that afterward you

won’t be able to complain, because, well,

for example, before, a personal

search — what is a personal search? A personal

search means they can, like,

stop you on the street and, generally speaking — yes, but to reach

into your pockets, before they needed to have

evidence — that is, if there is evidence that

you are carrying drugs, that you are a participant

in a crime, then this could be done. Now this

is being replaced with “grounds”

to believe, you see. So before,

“grounds to believe” was for checking

documents. But in order to then, say,

search a person or strip them or something

like that, you needed actual evidence. Now

that too is just “grounds.” So basically, you

could hardly imagine that tomorrow

you’d be stopped on the street and they’d start

going through your pockets — police officers — and you’d

say, “What are you doing? You have no

right to do that.” And usually they didn’t do it,

yes, we rarely came across things like

that. Now this will become absolutely

completely legal. And all under the so-called right

of a “personal inspection,” which can, in

principle, literally go as far as

stripping someone naked — such a harsh form of personal search.

It’s simply undressing a person. There will be

some police officers, security personnel — they will have

the power to do this preventively,

essentially without any real

substantial grounds for it. That is,

the area becomes so blurred that

a person can simply — well, just like this —

end up in the police: served in the army, went

into the police, and that’s it, they gave you an ID

and now you can stop people and simply

frisk them on the street,

and there’s nothing anyone can do against you.

Absolutely nothing.

Even

the requirement to identify themselves — before, well, they

didn’t do that before at rallies,

especially there: they run up, grab you, and so on.

Now they are allowed not to identify themselves because

you may refrain from identifying yourself if

you are supposedly in the process of

stopping an offense, dragging away some unfortunate person. And

take that bus example — you saw it: he was sitting on the bus,

he wasn’t wearing a mask, three idiots walked in

and said, “Oh, a violator.” From that moment on, they

are considered to be in the course of stopping

an offense. Or, say, at a protest,

everyone came to a rally, it was declared

“unauthorized,” there are 5,000 Rosgvardiya officers (Russia’s National Guard)

there, and from that moment on they are

in the process of stopping an offense. They

are not required to identify themselves to you, not

required to show their badge. And there, there’s

a separate clause stating that

police officers now bear no

responsibility — that is, it is separately

spelled out, you understand. I mean, in

principle, a police officer is not responsible

if he is not doing something

illegal — if he does something lawful, okay; if he does something

illegal, he bears responsibility. But now

this is written out separately — absurd, but

it is separately stated that he bears no

responsibility. And of course, a very

very telling example of all this

is the situation with breaking into cars.

Because, okay, going through someone’s

pockets somewhere, or stopping them to check

documents — but getting into

a car, that’s something more, right?

After all, a car is very much your personal

space. It’s a place where you

spend a lot of time, a place where

your belongings are kept,

a place where drugs or something else can be planted,

I mean, it is

a significant part of your property, and now

from a formal point of view,

answering the question whether any

police officer can simply break into

a car for no reason, some Interior Ministry person will tell you: no,

of course not, there is a closed list

of cases. Let’s look — I took an image from Meduza

with that closed list: for

saving citizens’ lives, for ensuring

citizens’ safety, for stopping

a crime, for checking reports of

a terrorist threat, for clarifying the circumstan-

ces of an accident, and so on, in search of

prohibited items, for detaining

suspects

or defendants. In other words, any police officer can easily

find a reason. He’ll say, “Well yes, I

did it to clarify the circumstances

of an accident,” or “I did it

in search of prohibited items” — got into

the car. And what does “get into the car” mean? It means

breaking it open, smashing

the window. You come back to your car and

the window is smashed, and they’re sitting there — who knows, maybe

they just — well, as usual, God, the cops —

needed somewhere warm to drink beer

so they wrecked the car, got inside, sat there,

smoked, drank beer. You come back and

the window is broken, the cops broke it, and

there’s nothing you can do. And then you’ll be left trying to

prove something. This is a zone of absolute, total

lawlessness. This needs to be talked about, and it

needs — sorry that I keep coming back

to my own point — they will revise this, whether they apply it or not,

only if they understand: zero votes for United Russia,

zero votes for United Russia, zero votes

for Putin. If they understand that in a country

of 147 million people, maybe there are a million

police officers and Rosgvardiya personnel who like

this sort of thing, and they will explain that

of course they won’t arbitrarily

break into cars just to drink beer — but if

140 million people, or 80 million people, not only

dislike it, but actively dislike it,

they write against it, they speak out against it,

they discuss it among themselves,

and in the monitoring system they bring Putin

a memo saying, “You know, Vladimir

Vladimirovich, on our social network

VKontakte, the number of negative

comments about the police, about this law, and

about you personally has increased by”

280,000 views. And then they won’t accept it.

They won’t. But as long as we stay silent, they will.

They will accept it. Just imagine that in

the situation with our police, I basically started this

program with the idea of protecting the police,

protecting all decent police officers. I don’t

see any contradiction here, but overall

our policing system—let’s

be honest—is just a gathering of

corrupt people and perverts, really,

and some kind of slackers, because the system

is so degraded that the worse you are,

the better your chances of rising through it.

You’re from Krasnoyarsk, the same city I

mentioned at the start of the program. Well, you

saw some absolutely wild cases this week.

Two girls, aged 17 and 18,

asked a police patrol crew for help.

They said a man had attacked them

and committed

violent acts of a sexual

nature against them. What happened next?

They were charged with an administrative offense

for violating

self-isolation rules. No joke. And only after

a scandal did they find the

attacker, and the police said they would not

fine these girls. Thank you very much.

And there were all sorts of hints that

the girls must have been doing something wrong,

or were in the wrong place at the wrong time,

or had broken some rule. Yes, whatever

16-year-old

and 17-year-old girls

do all kinds of

foolish things, but excuse me—

when they come to the police and say

someone committed some kind of sexual

violent act against them, and they’re told, “Oh yeah?

What were you doing out on the street? Let’s

fine you,” that says the entire

police system is completely rotten, and

if those officers are not fired

immediately, if no case is opened against them

for abuse of office or some other official crime,

instead they say, “Fine, to hell with you, since

the newspapers are writing about it,” says

the precinct chief, rolling his eyes,

“all right, damn it, we won’t

fine you.” That’s how the Russian

police work. And if this police force, which is already

completely out of control, without

oversight from the courts, the prosecutor’s office, or society

at all—if you simply remove any

remaining restraints, even formal ones, it will be

a total nightmare, and we will feel it

very, very soon. And people not

involved in politics will feel it

even more, because if it’s some

political activist, at least they’ll

film it, put it on YouTube somewhere,

and send it to me, you understand, and

some number of people—a million

people—will see that video. But with an ordinary

person, they’ll force him into a car, twist his arms,

plant anything they want on him, beat him up

in the street, strip-search him. A pretty woman is walking along,

they’ll go through her bag, paw through all her things, and then say,

“Well, that’s just how it is. We thought she was

a drug courier (someone who hides drug stashes), and we had grounds

to suspect that she was making a drop,”

and that’s it. And you won’t even be able to sue,

you won’t even be able to file complaints anymore, because

they’ll openly laugh in your face.

This cannot be allowed. And the only way to prevent it,

is by one method only, once again:

go after United Russia, go after

Putin’s approval rating. So if you have

some acquaintances, I don’t know,

who are usually the kind of

fun-loving people often inclined not to

I don’t know, well,

like law enforcement very much—explain to them:

if you vote for Putin, then

tomorrow this is how they’ll search you

on the street, this is how they’ll climb into your car.

That’s where we need to strike, so that all these

people run out and vote against

Putin. That’s very important. And on this topic, people

keep asking me a lot about the Shaman, and

on the one hand, I’ve probably already talked about him

for the third or fourth time—about the Shaman,

Alexander Gabyshev—in my program, and

the first time I laughed, the second time

I laughed, the third time I was kind of joking, but

now it’s not funny to me at all,

not funny at all, because

really, without exaggeration, the situation

is that there is Putin, who is

obsessed with all sorts of, I don’t know,

astrology and esotericism in general, and he

is genuinely, freaking panic-stricken by this

Shaman. By now it has become completely clear

that they’ve really gone after this Shaman, and they’ve

locked him up for 24 hours and opened a criminal case against him.

He’s just some guy from Yakutia (a republic in northeastern Russia)

recording videos, with some

equally strange people around him, and they are genuinely

afraid of them because they believe in shamans,

just as they believe in all these

other things of theirs. They all go to astrologers, they

have special people

who help protect them from

negative influences. I mean, really—

the man is sitting in a bunker. The danger

of coronavirus exists for everyone, for all

leaders on planet Earth and for ordinary

people too, there is a coronavirus risk, and

yet only in our country does the president actually

sit in a bunker. Well, maybe there are also

some crazy African

dictators or someone else like that who are

hiding away the same way, but ours is sitting in a bunker and

he is afraid of the Shaman, and this Shaman is constantly

being jailed so that he won’t march on Moscow with

other shamans and beat his drum, damn it,

because they are genuinely afraid of that

drum. But when they are afraid, look at how

There’s video showing how they stormed the place.

There really are people going in there with shields.

Some kind of special forces unit is carrying shields, I mean—

And this “shaman” is just, like, basically—

a guy, I don’t know, around 40

years old, short in stature.

frail-looking, and a whole squad is coming with shields in order

to arrest him.

Let’s watch the clip.

Hello.

Hello. Why are you violating

self-isolation? What do you mean, no?

What

self-isolation? What self-isolation?

Police ID, please. Please step away from

the cordon.

Please, come on, come on. According to

the federal law on the police. So you’re

basically driving us away now? What kind of

cordon is this? Cordon, cordon—move back,

please, to a certain distance.

Come on.

Come on. Do you understand what

is happening? Why?

That’s it.

It’s some absurd parody of the film

*Star Wars*: a village house, a cat,

a barking dog, and people are marching in with shields, and well—

this is absolute lawlessness. He was

detained, taken to a psychiatric hospital, and we

understand that in that psych ward they’ll simply

finish him off. We know how all this works.

A huge amount has been written on this subject,

including texts by Soviet dissidents (opponents of the Soviet regime), it’s just—

they start “treating” you, and after a while you turn into

a vegetable. That’s how

that very punitive psychiatry works.

People really like to joke about all this, about all these

what do you call them,

those sulfazine-type things, when you can no longer

throw someone in prison for various

reasons—including because, well, everyone, people

have been following this shaman. At first it was

funny, so a lot of people probably, I don’t

know, maybe a third of Russia’s residents know

about this funny thing—that Putin

got scared of a shaman, and they’re following this

situation, so jailing him seems

inconvenient. So instead they decided to simply

medicate him to death. But this is lawlessness.

Whatever this shaman may be like, I don’t know,

eccentric or not eccentric,

he hadn’t done anything bad to anyone, and they

staged a public

police outrage around him. Can these people

and their superiors be given new powers?

Of course not. People ask me: and the project—

“Scanner,” Alexei, what do you think, how

will the police restore public trust in themselves?

Well, first they need to be put in

conditions where they at least have to

want, or feel compelled, to restore trust in themselves, and

the only way to create such conditions is through

mass public discontent, when everyone

understands—not the rank-and-file cops, they already

know everyone hates them, but

their political bosses need to understand that

no one is going to vote for them.

In fact, reform of the Interior Ministry (MVD) and

attempts to make some changes in the MVD

only happened after one

of the Moscow police chiefs, Yevsyukov,

went and shot people—only then did everyone

I mean, it was no longer possible to hide

the fact that mid-level bosses

were basically just psychopaths,

alcoholics, and corrupt officials, and then there began

some kind of semblance of a purge, which

very quickly degenerated, and all this

re-certification turned into, well,

the same old thing: the bosses promoted their own people,

while honest—or at least more or less decent—people

were pushed out, and it became harder for them

to work. And the worse a person was, the

faster he advanced. But we need

precisely

to keep pressing this issue so that all of United Russia

sits there worrying that