Putin Is Changing the Constitution, on Mishustin’s Government, Alena Vodonaeva Is an Enemy of Russia

[music]

Good evening, everyone. It is exactly 8:00 p.m. in Moscow.

That means we are live on air

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

Navalny — or, as a man with blood on his hands

called me this week by State Duma deputy

Milonov of United Russia. You know him,

that wonderful specimen.

I missed you all very much. It is a shame, of course, that I

was not able

to comment on these remarkable

events that have been unfolding over the last

ten days. In previous broadcasts, I

saw various funny comments saying that I

left because I got scared

of the changes in the country,

scared of Mishustin’s new government.

That is not true. I am not afraid of Mishustin. We

are now going to try to discuss everything

in detail. Please send your questions with

the hashtag #RussiaOfTheFuture on Twitter, and they

will be shown to me here. I will try

to answer them. Our last broadcast —

well, I mean during those events late

last year, when they were once again breaking into

our studio — I hosted the last one because of that

from some kind of

underground location. And now it already

feels as if a very long time has passed.

In fact, this is important: we have returned to

the studio. Like phoenixes, we are once again

trying to rebuild ourselves, and here your

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Today we are testing

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I will keep reminding you about it during

the broadcast. Send in your questions, but of course

the main thing, the one question I have been flooded with,

the question that keeps coming in from everywhere,

the one everyone is asking, is this:

As I was coming back from vacation, people were literally

coming up to me at the airport and asking:

what on earth is going on with all these

strange events — the resignation

of the government and Putin’s statement about

changing the Constitution?

What changes, exactly?

What are they even doing? What is all this for?

Why are they doing these strange things? Because right now,

when you follow the news feed, all of this

really looks insane. And most importantly,

there seems to be no logic in it at all. I mean,

it is just a series of strange and

incomprehensible things. What is happening?

The correct conclusion is that

in fact, nobody knows what

is happening. Putin probably has a rough

idea of what he wants

to achieve, but now, already 10

days after all these changes began,

I am absolutely convinced that

he does not have a precise plan either, because

right now all sources — whether

analytical articles or simply people

who are inside the system, insiders —

are saying that nobody knew about this.

Medvedev also learned of his fate only the day before.

The broad circle of people who are now

joyfully shouting, “Hooray, a new government!”

“This is great, let us hurry up and change

the Constitution!” — they also knew nothing about it

and are now simply shocked,

just pressing the button, so to speak.

So the question of why, of what exactly Putin has done, is not

clear. What he is doing is alarming and extraordinary,

and not entirely understandable. But why he

is doing it seems fairly clear to me.

That is where I want to begin the program. In order

to understand why Putin is doing these

strange things — first and foremost, changing

the Constitution — for him this is a very, very

significant step, because one of the

narratives he repeated

consistently and constantly throughout

all of his presidential terms was that

he would never change

the Constitution. For him, the Constitution

was a sacred cow.

Russia’s Constitution is the framework

of a super-presidential republic. He likes it

very much. For him, it is excellent,

great. And starting in 2002,

let us listen: he says that

we are not going to change the Constitution.

“But even now I can say that I am against

anyone, no matter who they may be and no matter what

good intentions they may

be guided by, violating the Constitution

of our country.” That was in 2002. In 2004,

Putin said that as soon as we start

amending the Constitution — here is his quote —

“that is already the path toward some kind of unstable

situation. Once we start amending it, we will not

be able to stop.” Prophetic words, by the way.

Let us continue. In 2005, he said

that the main element in

state-building is

stability, and stability can be

guaranteed only by the Constitution. Again,

the Constitution is a sacred cow. In

2017, perhaps my favorite

statement by Putin was the one where he said that

when someone advises changing

the Constitution — then the British, after the whole

Litvinenko affair (the poisoning of former Russian security officer Alexander Litvinenko in London), said that he

Maybe in Russia they need to back off.

As Duma member Tumanovsky said, change yourselves.

In 2007, to other countries

they were making demands of us as well,

setting some kind of excessive expectations, and

also giving, in my view, insulting

advice for our country and our people

to change the Constitution. They need to change their brains

instead of changing our Constitution.

[applause]

You see how tough and uncompromising that sounds.

They need to change their brains. I mean, this is

a man speaking who understands that he

is not going to change the Constitution. He is perfectly

capable of serving four terms, and then another

four terms. He is completely satisfied with everything,

he controls everything, and he does not

want to change anything. In 2000

or rather a little later, in

2010, he explains that, generally speaking, he could

change the Constitution, but under no

circumstances will he do that. Let's

listen.

If I believed that

a totalitarian or authoritarian system

was the most

preferable for us, I would simply have changed

the Constitution. As you understand, that would have been

easy to do. It would not even require

any kind of nationwide vote. It

would have been enough to push that decision through

parliament, where we had a majority

of votes.

After all, when a person says something like that,

it is clear that this is what he has in mind

all along. But he is not going

to do it. Two weeks before his

most recent presidential election, Putin

again came out and firmly declared that

he would not change the Constitution. I have never

changed constitutions, and certainly not

to suit myself, and I have no such plans

as of today.

This man lies constantly, obviously.

He lies constantly, and throughout all his 20 years

in the office of president, in the position

of the country's leader, he is, secondarily,

stealing—but first and foremost, when it comes

to the Constitution, he spoke so

consistently and for so long

that, still, it seems to me that until

the very last moment, he did not have

some kind of grand master plan

to replace the Constitution. Nevertheless, everything

ended up moving in that direction.

As the great prophet Vladimir

Volfovich Zhirinovsky said a couple of years ago,

he said something that everyone

laughed at and said, there goes Zhirinovsky again,

spouting nonsense. But let's

listen. One year he said that what Putin is building now is this:

there will be nothing at all,

no elections, only a State Council.

Zhirinovsky, with prophetic words: in

six years, you know, there will be no elections

at all.

Come on now, I say—young lady, look at me—

as for elections, there will be no more

elections. The last presidential election has already happened,

and they are tired of staging this whole charade. There will be

a State Council, a collective body where

the chairman of the State Council, with the powers

of a president, will be chosen at a meeting

of the State Council.

It will be formed from the best

governors, supposedly the best

ministers, the apparatus, deputies—all 340 of them

will sit in St. George's Hall

in the Kremlin. At some point there was a last election, and

after that, it will no longer be needed.

That's it. He will be there for life. We will

preserve him as best we can. They removed

the two-term limit.

Asia—we are Asia.

So why did this happen after all? It

is happening—the answer to that question, again,

is just my assumption, which

simply follows from my understanding

of politics, but I am sure that this is how it is.

In fact, everything being discussed right now

is purely guesswork or analysis

just like what I am offering now, because

whoever may claim to have

precise knowledge about it—I am absolutely sure

that he is lying. No one except Putin

knows exactly what is happening. But

why is it happening? It is happening

for roughly the same reason that I, on these

broadcasts, do not tell you about my

plans, because you are constantly

writing to me and asking me, Alexei, what is

your plan? What are we going to do in connection with

the elections? And what are we going to do with

the voting? I can see these questions coming in—

people saying, well, what about the vote?

What are we going to do? Explain

what the plan is. And just understand: with Putin

it is exactly the same, only 10,000 or

a million times more intense. Everyone around him wants

to get some clarity. Just imagine

a thought experiment: here sits

Rotenberg, here sits Timchenko, here

sit Kostin and all the others,

all these crooks; here sits Alina Kabaeva, here sit

his children, Putin's people—and all of them, basically,

are asking: Vladimir Vladimirovich,

Volodya (a familiar diminutive of Vladimir),

tell us, by 2024,

what will you be? Will you remain president?

Very important things depend on that. I mean,

people are stealing billions, and to

steal billions you need long-term

projects. But he does not

understand whether it makes sense to get involved in

building another branch

of a gas pipeline, or whether new people will come later,

Medvedev's people, and squeeze you out because

Putin is no longer president, and starting some kind of

a gigantic mega-construction project, or rather

to sell off your assets and move them abroad

that takes time, it requires

administration, it requires

years, months, during which all of this will

be spent on it all, but you also want to have some

understanding, and if you don’t understand it, if you have no

grasp of it, then there are rumors here—what is

the government apparatus, the presidential administration

these are people who are constantly in the

back corridors, discussing things, lying or

retelling the truth to one another, and they

say that the boss has gone crazy, that he’s interested

only in international politics, and

it’s unclear who—well, who will replace him

in 2024, so maybe

we should be friendlier with Medvedev

or maybe, perhaps, Sobyanin seems more likely

maybe Sobyanin will be the next president

so let’s be friendlier with Sobyanin

and some new coalitions start to emerge

new tandems—and Putin understands this perfectly well

he knows this whole crowd, and for him this

this uncertainty within the apparatus

is destructive; people simply won’t

do anything

they won’t obey you, they won’t

take you seriously if they don’t

understand what your plan is. That’s why I

am convinced that the main idea behind what

is happening now is very poorly

thought through; internally, nothing has been

thought through at all. There was simply a need

objectively to send a signal—not to us, but

to his own people: guys, don’t twitch, I’m

staying in power and I will be a president for life

therefore you don’t need to

invent anything, you don’t need to try to

look for other people, you don’t need to

think about politics at all, about anything

I’m staying

and I’ll stay until the end, because the only thing

that is clear from what they announced is

that the guy really wants to remain

until the end by means of some kind of arrangement

that is unclear and strange—whether it will be

the State Council—beyond that, nothing at all is

clear, and obviously nothing has been thought through

at all, because there are simply

some ridiculous things there, with that same

whole process of amendments to the

Constitution. It’s obvious that this is

absolutely unprepared. Putin said

one set of things—let’s listen, one minute

17 seconds—here is what Putin said

the first sensational statement as part of

his address to the Federal Assembly (Russia’s parliament), but all

of that was one thing, while the amendments are now

already going in a somewhat different direction. Let’s listen

to what he said: “I believe the time has come

to introduce into the country’s law, into the fundamental law

of the country, certain changes that directly

guarantee the priority of Russia’s Constitution

in our legal space. I propose

to change this procedure and entrust

the State Duma not simply with

agreeing to and approving the candidacy

of the Chairman of the Government of the Russian

Federation

but then, upon his nomination, upon the

nomination of the Chairman of the Government,

all deputy prime ministers and federal

ministers. I propose, at the constitutional

level, to establish

mandatory requirements for persons who

hold positions critically important for

ensuring the security and sovereignty

of the country: they may not have foreign

citizenship, a residence permit, or any other

document that allows permanent

residence in the territory of another

state.”

[applause]

“Even stricter requirements should

apply to persons seeking

the office of President of the Russian

Federation

I propose establishing here the requirement of

permanent residence in the territory

of Russia for at least 25 years, as well as

the absence of foreign citizenship or

a residence permit in another state.”

So, in other words, a set of rather

strange proposals was voiced, which

actually looked as though

the presidency would become less influential

while the State Duma and the Federation Council

would gain more powers

plus the State Council—a more complicated

system. But now some amendments are being introduced

that are being drafted, that have apparently already

been written, as it turns out, and very amusingly

a situation arose where they created some

enormous working group on changing the

Constitution

into which they included some random, unremarkable

people, and then one day later

they presented these amendments in the name of the group

after which bewildered people

for example, the philanthropist Elizaveta Glinka—no, rather, someone like Olshanskaya

even wrote on Facebook

they invited me into this group, but then

it turned out that in this group I know nothing

I did nothing, and somehow there are already

amendments appearing—we don’t know what

is happening, and no one in this group

knows what is happening, but they wrote

some amendments, and first of all they do not

really resemble what Putin originally said

in the first place, and many of them are not even

clear at all. For example, this

restriction on dual citizenship—who is it

aimed against? Against

Khodorkovsky?

And the 25-year residency requirement—living in Russia for 25 years

who is that aimed against? Against

Lukashenko, or against that same

Khodorkovsky? Why write that into the Constitution?

It’s unclear — I mean, this all completely

looks as if they sat down some lawyers and

PR people at the very last minute and said,

"Come up with a bunch of different ideas

that everyone will be talking about," and they

did come up with all sorts of things. In particular,

at first they included the idea that they would abolish

the priority of international law. Remember,

everyone went into an uproar and started discussing it

endlessly, and then they seemed to backtrack a bit

and said they weren’t going to do that

after all. I mean, it’s just a collection

of strange, chaotic initiatives

that tell us that

directly speaking,

the actual tactic for how Putin

gets from point A, where he is now president and

serving his current term, to the point after his final term

— point B, where he becomes the lifelong

leader of Russia — is not clear to them, and they

couldn’t discuss it in detail before

Putin’s address, because how

could they do that? You can’t exactly just

hold a big meeting, gather

lawyers, the Presidential Legal Directorate,

some hacks from the State Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament),

security people, and say, "Guys,

I’m holding a meeting on how I can remain

president for life so I can keep ordering everyone around

without formally being president,

so I can do all sorts of cool things

that I like — I’d

pick fights with Poland, complain that

they deny some of our wartime victories,

I also like sports, I’d

keep an eye on rhythmic gymnastics,

see what’s going on there, but at the same time I

wouldn’t want to deal with the government

because that’s what people criticize me for, though I’d still want

to control the government. At the same time I

would want to appoint all the judges, and I’d want

to make sure no one could do anything to me,

put me in prison under any circumstances, and that my

friends couldn’t be jailed either. So

let’s come up with a setup

that would satisfy all of

these wishes of mine." You simply can’t do that, even despite

the fact that there is some small,

tight circle of trusted mafiosi — maybe

five people he could say that to —

but even so, he can’t gather

the Presidential Administration and the leadership

of the Duma and openly announce this whole thing

directly. Everyone more or less understands that he

is aiming for this, but still, it wasn’t possible

to prepare it in advance. So

right now there is just some strange,

absurd, incomprehensible mess going on, including

on the government’s side, which

we

we’ll discuss. For example, there’s this very funny

little detail with these ideas about

not allowing people with dual citizenship

to run in presidential elections.

Actually, it’s a fairly

obvious thing, yes, and no one with

dual citizenship was really trying to run for anything anyway, so why

is this even necessary? But today in the

State Duma, when these very amendments

were being presented, this

United Russia (the ruling party) election official, a former

prosecutor’s office employee, a pretty nasty little guy,

a crook — but even so, he asked a fairly

logical question. He said, "Guys, maybe

we should use the same provision

for the prosecutor’s office too? After all, in the

prosecutor’s office, people with dual

citizenship don’t work. Makes sense, right? Logically, you’d answer

yes — but

United Russia and the people who

were presenting the bill practically said,

"No, that’s not logical. Let’s not do that. In the prosecutor’s office, let

people with dual citizenship work

in the prosecutor’s office,

but we don’t want such people

for the presidency." So that tells us that

there is basically no thought-out logic here.

These are strange measures in which

people just generally understand what Putin wants

and start trying to help him achieve it,

or fail to guess what he wants, and

I think this is going to be a fairly long,

drawn-out process. It’s not as if these

constitutional amendments will be adopted now and

that will be the end of it, because these amendments

don’t really give Putin

anything. Sure, they expand his

powers,

but they do not achieve his real goal. He does not

become a lifelong leader, and so far we do not see any

powerful State Council. If

this State Council has no extraordinary

powers, then what is it even for?

You’re not some big shot just because

you head the State Council — it’s still not even clear what

the State Council actually is. But I think there will be

several iterations. That’s exactly why Putin

started all this so far in advance — way, way in advance, in short,

he began doing all this early because

it takes several years

to gradually, gradually come up with this

arrangement, which probably

doesn’t even exist fully in his own head yet, because

there is no legal

framework in which you are the top man

but not the president, yet can order everyone around,

commanding everybody,

while not being responsible for anything, and at the same time

you can involve yourself in anything — you can

dismiss the government, remove judges

and appoint them. This kind of

father-of-the-nation model existed in China — there was Deng

Xiaoping — and naturally many people immediately started

discussing whether Putin wants to be

a kind of Russian Deng Xiaoping,

a father of the nation who effectively created

the state, and then has

successors after him — but this whole

Stability is being maintained, but here

there’s just one catch: Deng Xiaoping was the father

of China’s economic miracle. He created

all of this because he performed a miracle.

Putin, on the other hand, has no miracle to show for it — quite the opposite.

Twenty years of his rule have, basically,

led, if not to collapse, then to a demonstration

of the fact that, well, nothing works. There is no

major population growth,

no super-powerful economy, none of those

cities you see in China. I’ve been there —

I don’t know, there used to be fields and geese wandering around, and now

there are cities, high-speed trains are running,

bridges have been built. None of that exists in Russia.

No — the geese walked around then, and the geese are still walking around now, and

with those geese around, it’s impossible to claim, “I am

Deng Xiaoping, and therefore I will be the father of the nation.”

That simply doesn’t work. And this

arrangement Putin wants to achieve

does not exist in nature. They

will try to create it, but

it will all turn out very strangely, just as

things are unfolding very strangely right now in

the situation with the Constitution. I’ll talk about that now.

I just want to remind you that in

the description to our video there is a link for

us — it’s very important for our new

new donation format that we

are using, which in theory should be,

we hope, somehow invulnerable, or at least less

vulnerable to those who are constantly trying to

interfere with the money flow. If we manage to make this work,

then we’ll offer this system for use

to everyone else. If you see some

little ducks crawling across the screen, that basically means

the system is working. I hope

it is working. 45,000 people are watching us

live.

So, Pasha Bulakhov is asking me: could it really be that

he didn’t inform everyone — Alexei and the rest?

The plan for 2024, I mean.

Pasha, of course not. He probably discussed this address with

two or three people,

with Kiriyenko, of course, but if you

inform everyone, then the leaks will be

massive. There were already leaks about this whole

scheme involving the State Council.

People have been writing about it for two years now, more than two years, and

they’ve been saying there would be a State Council, and as we just

heard, Zhirinovsky (a Russian nationalist politician) was talking about it

for two years, saying that soon there wouldn’t be a damn thing

like elections anymore — there would be a State Council. You

can’t take some secret little plan of yours

and suddenly discuss it with a wide

circle of people, because everyone will know.

Putin, after all, by his psychological type,

is that kind of KGB man

who likes to do things suddenly; he likes

to do things in secret so that everyone

is stunned. You know, an address like this —

usually they discuss it, but here: the government resigns,

the Constitution is being changed — it’s completely

unclear what’s going on. It’s “cool” because

everyone is shocked, and you’ve kind of changed

the agenda — changed

at least some kind of political

landscape — and, as they see it, they

are now doing a great job of mobilizing everyone

around their

constitutional changes. And that’s what

I wanted to talk about, because

it’s very important: from now until

mid-April at least, we’re facing a whole damn

hellish, perverse campaign in which

everyone will be urged

to take part in some strange — I don’t even

know what to call it — nationwide

vote that is not

a referendum, not a normal

vote, and it’s completely unclear what the hell

it’s even for.

But it will definitely happen. More than that,

today I already saw online

the first screenshots showing how the Presidential Administration

or some PR people are

already buying up ad space in advance

to flood the entire internet

Show the screenshot — from that

science site, N + 1. They’re trying

to buy some advertising there in order

to talk about how important it is to hold

this vote on changing

the Constitution. It’s a strange thing, really.

Yes, they decided to hold some kind of

nationwide vote, and Putin said this about it.

Let’s listen — eighteen

seconds — that all amendments to the Constitution

will be adopted by a nationwide

vote, given that the proposed

innovations concern substantial changes

to the political system and the functioning

of the executive, legislative,

and judicial branches, I consider it necessary

to hold a vote of the country’s citizens on

the entire package of proposed amendments to

the Constitution of the Russian Federation. In other words,

that’s how it sounded, and how was it understood

by everyone? That they would come up with some

absolutely idiotic amendments of their own,

fraudulent ones, and then they would hold, apparently,

a referendum, because amendments to

the Constitution, obviously, are supposed to be adopted

in a referendum. But this “nationwide vote” —

if you’re being this grandiose about

changing the Constitution, then you hold

a referendum and amend the Constitution. That’s how

everyone understood it, and there was no other way to understand it.

A nationwide vote is needed in order to,

well, at the very least, legitimize

a decision that has already been made, right? But also,

it seems to me that even now a huge

number of people simply haven’t realized this.

Right now, 47,000 people are watching us

live.

Tell me, guys, do you understand that these

amendments were effectively adopted today already?

Surely not all of you realize that today

the State Duma already passed them on first reading.

took these amendments that were supposedly

prepared for us by some Cossacks and

charity people—who the hell even knows who they are

some random rabble of people. They’ve already passed them

in the first reading, and the system will work like this:

first they pass them, and that’s it—like, well, there you go,

the amendments have been passed, passed.

And then there’ll be some kind of nationwide

vote

that will sort of approve it

and legitimize it, saying, like,

sure, the deputies already decided everything, but we

the people also came and voted, we’re also

in favor.

Why is this needed? What is this for? It’s

actually super stupid. Right now, people still haven’t

fully realized it yet,

but when they pass it in the second and

third readings, and all the amendments are thereby

adopted, it’ll be clear that

everything has already been decided. How are they going to convince everyone

to go to this strange vote?

What exactly will it even be? It’s really not

clear. So today, let me show you

a clip from TV Rain (an independent Russian TV channel), there a deputy

from, I think, A Just Russia or

or United Russia—Gartung—he’s in this

very group on amending the Constitution

and he was asked there: why the hell do we need

a vote if you’ve already passed everything?

He says it directly: this vote doesn’t

change anything. Let’s listen.

That is, if citizens end up

voting and 90 percent of citizens say

we’re against the amendments,

nothing happens? The amendments just go through?

Well, then Parliament will think about it,

and will probably discuss it, and the president

will think about it too, because this is the

president’s position—the president proposed it.

Let’s, before we introduce

the amendments, let’s discuss them—that is,

we won’t just immediately adopt them, and

we’ll ask citizens for their opinion. How exactly we’ll

determine that is still a question; we still don’t

have an answer yet. But this vote, which

will somehow...

But if it’s going to happen not after the first

reading, but after the amendments

have been finally adopted—is that

correct? As I understand it, there will be no legal consequences

from this vote, at least for now.

Well, you know, we have initiatives

where, say, citizens collect

signatures for some initiative, and those signatures

must be reviewed. That is,

there are no direct legal consequences from collecting

those signatures, but there are delayed consequences

in any case.

But they’re saying it outright, directly.

And Gartung speaks cautiously because

apparently he himself is stunned by this

setup.

Which also confirms that all of this

was being rushed through; nobody understands what

is happening, because I very, very much

doubt that this idiocy was

built in from the very beginning—like, that we

of course the whole country will vote, but

there will be no legal consequences from it, no, it

won’t have any force, I mean,

if, theoretically, people vote

against it,

then maybe the State Duma (lower house of Russia’s parliament) should think about it, but

damn, that couldn’t possibly have been built in

from the very start. Probably at the very beginning

Putin was sitting there with some of his

hangers-on, and they said: yeah, we’ll make

the amendments, and there’ll be a referendum,

an interesting kind of vote, and we’ll build in here

all sorts of interesting little things inside

it.

For example, remove the word ‘consecutive’ so that

a person can’t be president for two

consecutive terms, and then all democrats and opposition-minded people

will have to come

and vote for that. And we also built in

the abolition of the supremacy of international law,

so it’ll be very hard for people like us

to boycott this referendum

because you have to come and vote

against those things—but it’s all in one package.

So you want to vote

both against some parts and at the same time

for others, and everyone goes crazy.

We win the referendum, everything’s great,

and then they realized that holding a referendum

is very difficult—you need 50

percent turnout for it. Who’s going to go to it

if everything has already been decided in advance? And then

when all these Putin schemes

that existed only in his head

ran into actual reality, they

said: man, you can’t hold any kind of

referendum like that, so they came up with

some kind of vote instead. And amazingly, just

amazingly, today Ella

Pamfilova spoke. She’s a genius woman. Remember when

she wouldn’t let me run in the election? She

said we’re not letting you into the

election because that’s what the law says. And now

Ella Pamfilova is just happily

running around like Baba Yaga (a witch from Slavic folklore) from a cartoon, with a

headscarf, shouting: what laws?

Let me quote her exactly. She says: let’s, so that

there’s no confusion, introduce the term

‘an exclusive one-time unique event’

so there are no references to current

legislation.

That kind of terminology—if you’re somewhere

walking in a store or down the street, and some creep

comes up to you and says, ‘a unique

one-time exclusive event,’ you immediately

understand it’s some kind of scam,

that they’re trying to take your money or

something from you. And here it’s exactly

the same. That is, Ella Pamfilova herself

is saying: well, we do have this law about

A referendum, illegal elections—and it all hurts, damn it.

Something or other, with references to...

the current legislation, various...

observers are needed, some kind of procedures...

you need to give airtime to some...

opponents, supporters—but overall this is...

it’s all so complicated—let’s just do some kind of special...

campaign, let’s just cancel everything to hell...

screw the laws, and hold some kind of...

meaningless, incomprehensible vote.

Why was this even introduced? What is going on?

What’s happening is simple: one old man decided to remain...

leader for life, and clearly doesn’t know exactly how...

to do it, how to pull it off, so they...

are doing all sorts of strange things. But guys, they...

already wrecked the economy. Why? Because...

they don’t understand what needs to be done for...

Russia to have rising wages and...

economic growth. And, basically...

when they pursue their own...

political course, they also don’t really...

understand how to do it properly, and...

there aren’t many examples to follow, so they do...

whatever they can, and in particular they’re giving us this...

you and me, this very strange and...

vote, which in essence is just awful too.

There was also a funny moment in the State Duma: Volodin, by the way...

the former head of the supervisory...

board of the Higher School of Economics (a major Russian university)...

holder of some academic degrees, supposedly...

someone who is supposed to be a very smart man...

at a press conference in the Duma...

a BBC correspondent asked him this...

elementary question: please explain...

what is this vote for? You’ve just...

voted and passed these amendments in...

the first reading—well, you’ve passed them...

so why the hell do you need some kind of...

nationwide vote, and what will it...

change? And just listen to...

Volodin’s answer. Try to understand at all what...

he is saying, and while you listen, remember...

that this is being said by a man who...

once headed the Higher School of Economics (a major Russian university).

The point is that you, representing...

foreign media outlets...

this form that we have chosen for ourselves...

we are choosing it—complex, but at the same time...

democratic—when in discussing these...

amendments, participation is not limited to...

deputies and members of the Federation Council...

and regional parliaments, but in the end...

all of this will be decided by the citizens of...

our country. And for your own countries, you should take...

and implement this, because when you elect presidents...

there, a couple hundred congressmen...

decide the fate of the world.

And then we all become hostages...

to such decisions, when...

everyone gets shaken by them, and then you start...

pushing your economic interests...

while blocking other countries. So follow...

Russia’s path. Anything else is interference in...

our affairs, so here too, be...

careful, and do not violate our...

legislation, because last time...

someone came up and tried to explain everything to you...

openly and clearly.

And you start inventing things—elections, then...

something else. In this case, right now we are...

setting standards. If in the future you do not follow them...

when it comes to decision-making...

while representing other countries...

we will consider that undemocratic.

What did he even say? Some bottom-tier speaker...

of the State Duma, I mean...

the idea is that we elected certain...

best representatives of the people, elected...

the best 450 people. Those best 450...

people—450 people...

then elected one single best, the most...

awesome one, who would speak better than...

everyone else—that’s called the speaker. And this...

stuffed dummy from United Russia (the ruling party) is babbling on, and you ask...

the question: please explain why...

there needs to be a vote if the president is going to sign it anyway...

and then it’s all, ‘you elect congressmen and...’

And the BBC reporter is saying: there are no...

congressmen or president involved there—what...

are you even talking about? But he keeps rambling. Why?

Because there is no answer. Well, they themselves didn’t...

explain it to him. They just told him: listen, Volodin...

we didn’t quite finish something here, we overlooked something...

and this is what we ended up with, so...

we’ll have to hold a vote, because Putin already...

promised it in his address, but in fact it’s not...

needed at all, and these general amendments to the country’s...

constitution—who the hell knows what’s going on, really.

Well, it all has to go through the State Duma, and...

journalists are going to ask questions.

You’ll say that we are setting new...

standards. It may seem to you like some kind of...

simplification, but actually it’s not...

a simplification at all—that’s really how it works.

It’s just total chaos.

Putin wants to become a lifelong guy—

a leader for life—and around that...

there is incomprehensible chaos involving some...

strange people doing strange...

things. When I was watching...

Volodin’s speech, I thought: where have I...

seen this before? I’ve definitely seen this somewhere. I just...

remembered and immediately googled it on YouTube.

Let’s take a look. It’s just—here are two...

giants, two titans, just so you know: Volodin and...

the guy who’s about to speak now. So...

when it seems to you that complete nonsense is happening...

just think for yourselves: can these...

people really produce anything other than...

nonsense? So: two wise men...

the one who is stirring up Russophobia...

this, that, all of that...

all of this—I’m addressing these people...

you’re going to push it too far, mark my words.

With this Russophobia that you, that you are...

stirring up.

I’m not saying this is addressed to any one specific...

specific person or anyone in particular. Thank you.

the Polish people, twice over, for—

with support, just to note, he said

that, mind you, this could

end badly.

Listen, let's not provoke me.

I've already answered that question myself.

I answered that question myself: where could all this

lead? This whole thing, that's the point.

This ongoing hysteria, which

sometimes takes hold,

a cowardly person, someone timid,

a tsar or a rat driven into a corner,

put under pressure, may lash out and bite.

A coward can sometimes fire a shot out of sheer panic.

That's what I mean.

All this phobia,

is not leading us to anything good.

And that's why such strange things

are happening. What will happen next with all this

is completely unclear, not in the slightest.

I mean, it's clear what he's aiming for, but how they

are going to do it—I think that right now

they themselves don't really understand what to do.

These are strange, absurd things, and the first

opinion polls will, after a while, show

that people are tapping their fingers to their temples (a Russian gesture meaning someone seems crazy) and

simply do not understand what is happening. When

people, by and large,

when millions of people are already at the end of their rope,

and these amendments are, for all practical purposes, already

adopted, they are being asked to vote for no clear reason.

I can guarantee you: people will really, really

dislike this. Not a single

person will like it. Of course, they will

say, well, we enshrined pensions

in the Constitution, and other things too, but

that won't affect anyone. First,

it has already been decided, and second,

Putin deceived people over pensions, and over all

his social promises. What's more,

he deceived people over the Constitution too—he promised

not to rewrite it at all. He lied.

So no one will believe that he will

necessarily uphold

any social guarantees simply because

they are written into the Constitution. It seems to me

no one is going to buy this trick, and

after some time, probably,

the presidential administration will, after all,

come up with a clearer plan

for what is happening, and

then they will act somehow

less chaotically, less idiotically.

But overall it's still strange, because

because what they are doing is, in principle,

a strange idea: to invent some kind of super-

post for Putin under which he would be

in charge of everything while not formally being president at the same time.

As for our actions, things are simpler for us here.

We understand that in any system

they create, it will remain such that

whether it is the State Council, the role

of the representative body of power—that is,

the State Duma, the Federation Council, or this

State Council, which it is still unclear how it will

be formed—

that role will most likely grow.

That is why we have

Smart Voting. In fact, what is happening now

with these changes is, among other things,

a reaction to our Smart Voting.

They understand that within this

system it is too dangerous for them, because,

well, today in Moscow people have stopped

voting for United Russia, and tomorrow in

the rest of the country they will stop

voting for United Russia too. That is why they

are trying to invent something new where, well,

where all power goes to the State Council. But one way or

another, the role of our machine,

our mechanism that works

against United Russia, is growing.

As for the question, I see a lot of people

writing in, like, what are we supposed to do about this

vote—boycott it or not,

vote for it or against it,

it's all unclear, nothing is clear.

Let's just wait and see how

this vote is actually organized. I

assume, based on what has been announced so far,

that people simply won't go, and

no one will even hear our, our

call to go there and vote,

because it won't change anything if it has

already been decided. But maybe it

will somehow be different, so

any tactical steps

regarding this vote, it seems to me,

are simply

too early to talk about at all.

Now, answering the question from Evil Tatar, I'm

being asked by Evil Tatar about the possibility

of proving the illegitimacy of Putin's

changes to the Constitution and bringing him to

accountability—that this whole

scheme of theirs is absolutely illegal or

illegitimate. All constitutional lawyers have already written

about this directly, but they are plainly

showing that this is impossible. Even if we take

this vote itself: either it is a referendum

or

the adoption of special constitutional

federal laws—but this childish

popular vote, that's not how it works. There are

Chapters 1 and 2 of the Constitution, which can only

be changed through a referendum. It is obvious that some

of the amendments, one way or another, affect

those first and second chapters.

In other words, they are changing everything; they are trying

to remake all of this without a referendum.

All of this is, of course, absolutely illegitimate

and illegal. Right now, for the time being, we cannot do

anything about it, but

repealing it later, someday, in

the Beautiful Russia of the Future, or on the road

to the Beautiful Russia of the Future, will be

quite simple, because there will be no need

to convince anyone, that is.

when people are unbiased and they are not

necessarily our supporters, yours and mine, in

the new representative body, the Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament)

but if they are not like Volodin (Vyacheslav Volodin, a senior Russian official)

and they are biased, then it seems to me—this is nonsense

somehow, what happened is nonsense, it is

all of this should be canceled. Viktor Medved...

People ask me, Alexei, what about the plans

to run for the State Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament), possible early

elections—I don’t think early elections are possible

elections.

I mean, why would they need them? To play around with

these various amendments

with State Councils and mess with our heads

it’s clear why he is doing that, but elections

to the State Duma

are still something real

and a very complicated problem for them, because during

them they will start making their choice, and we

will start doing Smart Voting

and some real confrontation will begin

district by district, over real issues. Maybe I’m

mistaken, but it seems to me there are no

serious signs that they will hold

early elections. At the very least, that would be

just wildly illogical.

Alexei, what powers of the office

of the president are left at all, they ask on

the stream. They are left—he ultimately increased

his powers, that’s the point, guys.

When he spoke before the Federal Assembly (Russia’s national legislature),

it sounded as if there would be

a reduction in the president’s powers.

In practice, those amendments that exist

have increased the president’s powers.

And so, I’m being asked

by Grigory Rakov: did Medvedev resign voluntarily

and here I’ll move on simply to

the pleasant part for me already—well, pleasant

in a way. We have this little chat

with FBK (Anti-Corruption Foundation), me, Zhdanov, Volkov,

the leadership of FBK and our political

organization, where we discuss all sorts of things.

When the message came that the government

of Medvedev had resigned, we all just

started talking at once: damn, what a

setback. I mean, just awful, because

Medvedev was very good, wonderful, and

marvelous—we loved him. But that’s because

he’s a crook, a thief, an idiot, and he also spouts

all kinds of nonsense, and he is the leader of United Russia

and of course it was very advantageous and

convenient for all of us

that Putin had Medvedev, and everyone

understands Medvedev’s uselessness, and

thanks to our joint, shared

actions—specifically, I don’t know, me, the people in

this office, and you who helped us—we

destroyed

Medvedev as a public politician. He sent him

into resignation because Medvedev

was a weight tied to his feet. It’s impossible to make

any changes,

impossible to try to change the Constitution,

impossible to try to win new

elections and strengthen your power while you

still have Medvedev, while 37 million

people have watched this

remarkable film and then also

told their friends

and neighbors about this film—the thing that

ultimately finished off Dmitry Medvedev: “He Is Not Dimon to You” (a well-known FBK investigation). A crook

and a thief. And you certainly never thought that

this man was some kind of special villain

or an underground billionaire.

A lover of phones and other gadgets,

a funny bungler who falls asleep at important

events,

whom on the internet they call nothing other

than Dimon—“He Is Not Dimon to You”—but when you

watch this video by the Anti-Corruption Foundation

you will understand just how much we all

were mistaken.

[music]

[music]

[music]

I’m proud—this is our work, and once again thank you

so much to everyone who helped us

spread all of this and made it so that

Medvedev lost his political

future and ended up simply somewhere on the

margins, in his super-humiliating

position as deputy head of the Security Council

a post specially

invented for him.

Some people think it’s too early to write him off

that he is still some kind of

super-trusted person for Putin. Yes,

he is certainly a super-trusted guy for

Putin, but apparently a huge

number of publications on this subject

suggest that Medvedev really knew nothing about

the coming resignation, at least a couple of

days in advance. He did not want to resign. He

still wanted to play with the idea that

Putin would go off to the State Council or wherever

and that he might still perhaps become

president again. That is, he and his entourage

but especially his entourage, obviously, they

were naturally lobbying for all of this

because now everyone has been removed from the

government, and all these social projects

all these funds, all these businessmen,

all this huge number of hangers-on

that had been sitting in the government

for many, many years—now a new

crowd has come in, and now they will gradually start

devouring everyone, and the Medvedev people will

be devoured fairly quickly

because it turned out that this whole

propaganda machine, 15 days

ago, was saying that Medvedev’s government was good,

that they were solid professionals, that there were

technocrats there,

great people who understand the economy—and then in

an instant, after the resignation, this whole bunch

started saying: finally, thank God

they did more than we did to start...

People are outraged: they removed Medvedev, so...

they got rid of that goat Medvedev and put in this wonderful

marvelous, super-mega technocrat instead.

Mishustin. I was listening to an interview with Vladimir

Solovyov.

I just had tears streaming down my face at the same time—

from joy and tenderness,

and also, of course, from shame. Solovyov

says that he is even afraid of the

optimism that is filling him.

That’s the mood—he’s afraid of his own optimism. In *Komsomolskaya Pravda* (a Russian tabloid newspaper),

he says that this is an

absolutely brilliant government,

Vladimir’s government—absolutely

brilliant, Solovyov says,

simply talking over the interviewer.

A magnificent, mega-government, and

well, it’s obvious they were simply told: the situation is complicated,

no one understands what

is happening.

They removed one crook and appointed another crook.

And all these people—Simonyan (Margarita Simonyan, Russian state media editor),

Solovyov, Kiselyov (Dmitry Kiselyov, Russian state TV host), obviously

were clearly given instructions from above: write that this is a

government of breakthrough, that this is a

government of growth, that this is an absolutely

brilliant government. And yet, out of 22

ministers, 12 were kept on.

So this is more or less the same

government. You can see the old

and new faces, but the key figures—Siluanov,

Kolokoltsev, Lavrov—

Shoigu, they all stayed.

And the replacements are not some kind of

you know, if we believe that

Medvedev’s government was such a

worthless, useless, rotten one,

that they were simply just sitting there doing nothing—well then,

Pasha Bulakhov writes: maybe the video *Dimon* won’t

get deleted after all; no matter what happens, that video

about Dimon (a nickname for Dmitry Medvedev) will just remain hanging there like a monument.

But if suddenly United Russia (the ruling political party)

agreed with us that Medvedev’s government

had become the most disgusting and

most useless in the world, then why did they keep almost

all the same people? All these supposedly new

people are just the very same people from the

government.

As for Mishustin, he has been

sitting in the civil service for 22 years already.

Twenty-two years ago he entered

state service; for two years around 2010

he worked somewhere in some kind of

commercial outfit.

But otherwise he is simply a man from

Medvedev’s government, with all the same

approaches. Medvedev’s government was horribly

corrupt; he is a person so compromised that

there’s nowhere left to stamp him, and he is just as much of a

idler and loafer as everyone else in

Medvedev’s government. And now they have all been given

instructions to praise these people, which

looks very funny when they write that

look, can you imagine, he introduced

electronic accounting reports. But first of all,

if you want to hear

some truly awful swearing about

Mishustin, just ask an acquaintance of yours—

an accountant, if you have one, or a chief accountant—

go up to them and

say: so, what do you think,

does the tax service in

Russia actually work properly?

Have they made life easier for businesses

and accountants? Have they created a normal

reporting system? And you will hear curses,

obscenities, and see hair torn out

and shirts ripped open,

because people inside the profession

understood that this whole tax system

was basically a den of crooks; they all sat there

engaged in shady schemes involving

VAT refunds and things like that. They introduced

electronic filing of reports—but what, was it not already being done in the rest of

the world?

After all, it’s 2020 now; it exists everywhere.

Electronic filing is standard everywhere; in fact, they introduced it

much later than everyone else. But

now all of this is being presented to us as simply

something utterly wonderful—

a marvelous super-mega government.

Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian

Direct Investment Fund, gave an interview in

Davos to our new favorite—Naila Asker-zade (a Russian TV presenter),

and said there that the difference is this:

Medvedev was focused on

stability, whereas of course this

government will be a government

of breakthrough. Let’s listen. Well,

the significance of this government—

this really is a very important moment. We

see that in the new appointments

very professional

previous ministers have been retained, and

new faces have also been added. And we see that while the

previous government was very effectively

focused on macroeconomic

stability and low inflation, the new

government is a government

of economic breakthrough, of economic

growth, and will undoubtedly be oriented

toward fulfilling the tasks that

the president outlined in his address

to the Federal Assembly. Therefore we expect

a very strong focus on investment,

on economic growth, and we see that many of the

people who came into the government have

already proven themselves to be effective

managers in the past.

What faces? What effective management

in the past? But as for the things that

I personally did right away, in the very first

days, regarding Mishustin—I went and

started looking at his declaration, looking at

Mishustin’s declaration, looking at the declaration

of his wife, and I simply took

a calculator and started adding it up year by year—

2007, 2008, and all the way through 2018.

I added up the officially declared income of Mishustin’s wife.

According to the disclosure—just imagine—

how much was in that declaration: 800

million rubles.

I thought, damn, 800 million

rubles. To earn a billion, well,

and declare it—meaning after

paying taxes—there would have to be some kind of

major business. I started googling, started

searching databases, looking for where

this supposed business of Mishustin’s wife was—and there isn’t one.

No one knows of any business, not even anything close.

It’s impossible for a person

to do nothing and still earn 800

million rubles. Impossible. The real estate

was immediately classified, which Proekt (an investigative media outlet) wrote about.

By today, a huge number of

publications had already come out, which we received with real frustration

because, generally speaking, we

had been saving that material for ourselves, but some journalists found something

and reported that there’s a house here,

a house there, and Mishustin’s sister already has

property worth 1 billion rubles.

Again, try to find some kind of

business

belonging to Mishustin’s sister that would match, in scale,

that kind of spending. I mean,

if you bought real estate worth

1 billion rubles, that means you have

several billion rubles, which means

you have a business that

brings in many billions of rubles, so that

your turnover is in the billions.

Yes, so that you could pull out a billion in net profit from it

and buy yourself all those houses

and apartments.

But that business doesn’t exist. It’s simply

legalized bribes and kickbacks. That’s how it

all works. Basically, in our country

the whole government is set up

in such a way that

well, where are you supposed to carry a suitcase full of cash?

That’s inconvenient, so you create

some supposedly legitimate business for your wife, and then

a businessman who wants to

pay you a bribe

signs a contract with your wife for something. And, I don’t know,

let’s say it’s for making

paper airplanes, and for each paper

airplane we’ll pay you 50 million

rubles. There you go: private business. “How do you explain

your billion-ruble real estate?” Well,

we declared the income. My wife

has a company, Daisy LLC—we won’t say what

it does, that’s none of your business—but we do have

legal income. We received

a billion.” In reality, they were folding

paper airplanes—or doing nothing at all.

And in fact, Mishustin’s appointment

and these strange

ministers around him also show

a hellish level of confusion. As I already said,

it’s now clear that Medvedev didn’t know either

until the very last day, or at most until the day before,

that the government was going to be changed.

And clearly,

Mishustin’s own candidacy and that of his

ministers were also put together in a rush,

because if they had thought

even a little,

they wouldn’t have made such strange

moves. First of all, Mishustin himself, as I

said, is rotten through and through, and it’s all

right there on the surface. Any claims by him

that he’s some kind of honest minister don’t

just

fall apart—they’re shattered by the facts: extracts from

registries, and there are huge numbers of them, not just two, from

real estate records

and everything else. They are creating in

the government what is basically an outright mafia,

an insiders’ club. Construction, in particular,

will be handled there by people brought from Moscow—well, I mean,

you know who, of course: Khusnullin.

He was once brought in from Kazan,

and in Moscow he built a huge

Kazan mafia network. I even counted, I think, about

60 of his former people

who had worked with him in Kazan

that he moved to Moscow. Here they

completely control the construction

market and simply steal tens of billions

of rubles.

There’s a version of events that I fully believe, namely that

it was Khusnullin himself who lobbied for it.

As for Alina Kabaeva, I completely

believe it, looking at how they generally

behave here—how brazen they are and how much

they steal—I have absolutely no doubt

that that’s exactly how it is. And of course,

big theft, big volumes, big VAT flows

are tied to taxes, and Khusnullin and

Mishustin have in fact long been

in some kind of super-close, super-

warm, and super-suspicious relationship,

because as soon as you try

to find out

how Mishustin and

Khusnullin are connected—whether it’s professional

or informal—you immediately find

some poems that Mishustin

reads about Khusnullin. Let’s listen: “On the

red planet, all your...

...have hidden away in cracks, mollusks and children, for

Khusnullin is arriving for them. Tomorrow he

will conduct an inspection at dawn,

putting on a suit of great

size, unmatched in strength,

and a jacket with a portrait of the Moscow

mayor.”

“With a master’s eye he will survey the planet,

feeling through the local soil with his hands, as if

setting up his office there. In it

he will discover building stone, a sunset on

a new contract, red in color, and the thought that

a swift meteorite

will pierce his brain like a dazzling spike—

the Kremlin built from such Martian granite.”

then on the ground, drenched in the capital

because it is something so diamond-like

let us propose it to the construction committee here

there are no taxes, for heaven's sake, with us

I'll take everything that fits into the rocket

the rocket of their anxious ones whistles like a difficult bullet

and difficult labor is expected as the cosmonaut is carried along

and builder Khusnullin, to Earth except for

the Martian rock, and there he is, sprawled out

as if in a carriage, preparing for launch in

in the courts and in concern

nearby is a trophy of Martian—go, which

he gave up, damn it, a wonderful medicine

for Dmitry Mironov asks, Alexei

how do you assess the poem

Mishustin's: on the red planet all creatures

fell asleep—very good, an excellent rating

the poem is ironic, wonderful

Mishustin reads very well, so perhaps

Mishustin should have been made minister of culture

appointed, in principle, when you look at

him like this, I mean, the guy reading

poems—apparently he came up with them himself, well, if not

himself, then he memorized the expression there and read it

he reads them with some kind of

a suspicious crook, but

well, and it seems you can do it normally, because

it would probably be worse if the guy, I don't

know, ate bricks or wore a bandana like

the biker 'Surgeon' (nickname of a pro-Kremlin biker leader) or something like that, or

just drank vodka, but that is a deceptive

impression—these nice and

pleasant uncles who do not eat

bricks and do not ride motorcycles

read poetry and deal with refunds

VAT refunds—they will steal 100 times

more than any biker 'Surgeon' would, because

what kind of Surgeon are we even talking about, but in a generalized

hypothetical sense, or some FSB officers

or a police officer—they do steal some things too

in huge quantities, but they do not have the brains

enough

to steal as much as all these

so-called white-collar types

there they really go all out

they perform to the fullest, and we will see it in

the government

in righteousness between—do not really

doubt it, but in general the people there

were selected in such a way that everything is obvious; what amazed me

was the new health minister

also one hundred percent confirming that

they urgently started doing something strange there

things, and they did not even think, because if you

just google this man, Murashko

the first thing you will see is that the guy was involved

in a criminal case about the procurement of CT scanners

which were bought at prices several

times above market value; they even tried to forcibly

bring him in as a witness—Milo said it nicely on

today's broadcast, he said it correctly

they tell us this is a government of super

professionals, super mega cool guys

a breakthrough, and so on, just as Dmitriev

said in the video I showed you

that these people came in and proved themselves

through their deeds—amazingly

the governor of Komi, Gaizer

has now been convicted for having, in his

government, created an organized

criminal group that embezzled

budget funds

the health minister in that

government was Murashko, damn it, who

is now the federal minister, and

so the guy was involved in a criminal

case, was with that Gaizer, and they

appoint him health minister, and

then they tell us about some kind of new

person—there is a separately funny

story with him: he headed Roszdrav

nadzor, one of the most important agencies in the system

of healthcare, and now they took him and

moved him from Roszdravnadzor to the post of minister

of health, and then there is Skvortsova—and where

to put Skvortsova? So Skvortsova was

moved to head

the Federal Medical-Biological

Agency, also one of the most important agencies

in the field of medicine—so basically

it was simply the top leadership

of healthcare, which failed at everything over

all the recent years, stole everything, but

they just, you know, like a Rubik's Cube

turned it once, and everything stayed the same

it all remained, only slightly rearranged: the one who was

in second position moved to first, and the one

who was in first moved there to

third; everything remained exactly the same

absolutely

and on top of that, this Murashko is absolutely

an astonishing person—if you just, on

YouTube now, try to find what

Murashko said about healthcare, then

you will see his interview from

2017, where he says that

there is no money, so the main thing actually will be

the task of Russian healthcare is

to discharge people from hospital faster and inpatient care

to—listen, this is completely logical

and then either we need to increase

healthcare spending; we would need to

pay more taxes, or

pay extra out of our own pockets

in addition—that is, there is no other

way, but at the same time we understand

that the economics of healthcare

must also be structured; we have to start somewhere

and we need to start by reducing

the length of hospital stays where today

there are medicines available that allow

therapy to be carried out on an outpatient basis

all of that is correct and wonderful—therapy

can be done on an outpatient basis; perhaps

for some sick people it may make

sense to discharge them earlier from hospital, but

the first thing to do is stop

stealing through CT scanner procurements, which is a splendid

...the very same minister was acting in exactly this way.

when he was working as part of that team,

a criminal group, as established by the court.

Governor Geizer's (Vyacheslav Geizer's) group, and they hardly would have

appointed him if they had at least bothered to

Google him—or they probably wouldn't have appointed

him sports minister. The mother and son are another story too.

A great story. I mean, the guy—

he was convicted. He used to head the Institute

of Physical Education.

And that Institute of Physical Education handed over money

for next to nothing, along with its enormous

plot of land for the location of

the Cherkizovsky Market. Even if you haven't been there

in Moscow,

you of course know very well about

the Cherkizovsky Market—a gigantic,

the largest in Europe, and the most criminal

market, run by the oligarch Telman

Ismailov.

All of that was located on land belonging to

the physical education institute, which

was illegally handed over by the man who is now

the sports minister. He was convicted, he was found

guilty.

Officially, the essence of it was: look, man, you

took land

that wasn't yours at all and handed it over to some

oligarch—damn it, you had no right to do that.

You simply stole it.

But the statute of limitations expired. After all, you weren't at

rallies throwing plastic cups

or, rather, protesting against the authorities,

you weren't tossing cups around at demonstrations,

so we're exempting you from punishment because of

the statute of limitations. But this is an established fact, and

right now, sitting in our government, we have

an officially recognized crook and thief—not a crook and thief

in the sense that Navalny calls everyone that,

but because a court found him to be one.

The court recognized him as a crook and a thief, and this is our

sports minister. How is that supposed to work going forward?

Why did they appoint them?

Well, because there was some kind of huge

rush, and they just needed to appoint someone.

And then some Mishustin-linked

guy said something like,

"I've got someone who can fill the role,"

"there's a good guy there, take him,"

"let's appoint him." They couldn't even Google

or read a biography, because otherwise I

seriously doubt they would have chosen

people like this. And now, wonderfully enough,

we now have a minister of culture.

I mean, it seemed like it would be hard to outdo

Minister Medinsky (Vladimir Medinsky), who

was basically a hack and a PR man for United Russia (the ruling party),

an absolutely finished scoundrel,

and it seemed there couldn't possibly be anyone worse. But then

they found some woman named

Olga Lyubimova. She was appointed

because her father is friends with Nikita

Mikhalkov, so this was basically Nikita Mikhalkov's pick,

and that's how she became minister

of culture. And naturally, overnight everyone started

looking up things about her online and immediately

found her LiveJournal blog.

In it, not actually that long ago—

about 10 years ago, I think, though even then she was

an adult, 29 or 30 years old—

she wrote absolutely astonishing posts.

Let's read, for example, a post about

how she basically hates

it all. She writes: "I can't stand opera, ballet,

classical music. For me, all

these memorial concerts for someone are just

a complete waste. I don't want to go anywhere at all,

I don't want to, don't make me—I just hate

excursions," she writes in all caps.

A lot of representatives of the so-called

liberal intelligentsia—liberal intelligentsia

really is "so-called," if we're being honest—

simply because they once

hung out together somewhere on Nikolina Gora (an elite suburb near Moscow),

eating sandwiches with red fish,

so now it feels awkward for them to criticize her.

And they bark: so what if she wrote something

10 years ago, some woman

posted something stupid? Well yes, actually, I

read that post by Lyubimova too and thought:

I don't really like excursions either. I also

don't particularly like many of the things she

hates. But damn it, that probably means I

shouldn't be minister

of culture.

No one is going to say, "Alexei, do you want

to be minister of culture? Let's appoint you."

I'd say: I'm not suited for that position.

I don't like excursions,

I don't like classical music, I don't

understand it, and so I'm not fit for

that job. And probably she isn't either.

If 10 years ago she didn't know or understand all this,

how can she

be minister of culture now?

But actually, the main complaint against her

raises a rather interesting

discussion around her, namely:

can we forgive a person who, 10 years

ago, wrote some nonsense?

People tell me: well, you wrote nonsense too

back then. Maybe I did write some

things that I would phrase differently now.

But I never wrote anything I would

have to disown. That's exactly why my blog

and everything I've written over many years—over all

those years—has already been examined a million times,

and everything anyone could use against me has already been brought up.

But can we forgive

Olga Lyubimova herself, who

is now going to be our minister of culture?

It seems to me that, again, in the context of the fact

that she will be working for us, with our

money, as minister of culture,

a country simply should not appoint someone who,

as a kind of manifesto, once wrote as an adult

that she basically hates everything connected with

well, I don't know, 90 percent of it.

what we call culture, but that's still

all right, but a person should be judged by their actions, and

what exactly are the actions of this Olga?

My dears, she's a protégé of Mikhalkov (Nikita Mikhalkov, the Russian filmmaker). She wrote

that she hates museums, theaters,

guided tours, and most importantly, unfortunately I

can't show you clips from this

wonderful show, because Channel One will get it banned

on YouTube. She was the creator and

head of the most hellish of all

propaganda shows, over there on

what's it called again? *Time Will Tell*,

yes, it was called *Time Will Tell*, right.

Exactly. So there you have

Solovyov, Kiselev, and some other

programs. On all these programs there are

some fake—or simply people

pretending to be a Ukrainian political analyst,

someone pretending to be an American

political analyst,

and several idiots who

pile onto them; everyone yells and screams, quite

well, it's hard to say it's the pinnacle of Channel One,

but not even the depths of it—this is specifically a show on

Channel One hosted by the most

just utterly disgusting people. Here you

see this famous episode when

a man came in with some kind of bucket

with a label on it and literally brought

a bucket of shit into the studio and

tried to hand it to some kind of

Ukrainian, or maybe Polish, or I

don't know whom they were hounding at that

moment, a political analyst. This was thought up by the

person who is now going to head

the Ministry of Culture, who will

decide which films get theatrical release and which

films do not, what should

be supported and what should not, and in general

the direction of culture—she will

be setting it. She will gather in one hall

all these tour guides, theater directors,

and so on and so forth.

Representatives

of, I don't know, conservatories too—and all of them

will know that she once wrote that

she couldn't stand them. She also made

a show where violence,

a bucket of shit, and she was their

boss. It seems to me that, first of all,

this is fundamentally a humiliating situation for

the whole country. I don't know what she will

do now in her post, but I do know for sure

that if we judge by deeds alone,

running the program *Time Will Tell*

is enough for this person to be

considered wildly, extremely indecent and

unfit

for any position, let alone

the position of Minister of Culture.

And yet she was appointed. By the way,

she immediately deleted her blog, although

not immediately—there was about a day of discussion,

after which she quite obviously, in a panic,

deleted it. And that also shows it: they appointed

some random woman. Why? Because Nikita Mikhalkov

called and said, twirling his mustache,

"There's a good girl there, the daughter

of my old boss. She also worked in

cinematography, so

appoint her as Minister of Culture."

And they appointed her. If they had at least

googled her,

they probably wouldn't have appointed her. But nobody

did, because all of this was happening

within the framework of some hellish,

incomprehensible, chaotic plan. Dim

Akhmedzyanov writes and asks: "Alexei,

tell us, what was that nonsense about

appointing Larisa Guzeeva (a Russian TV personality)?" Well, that

was such

a ridiculous thing. I mean, they

were appointing people in the government,

announcing various

ministers, this minister and that minister—it all looked so

stupid that I simply wrote on Twitter:

"They wanted Larisa

Guzeeva as Minister of Culture," remembering all the funny

things television had been saying, and a huge number of people

believed it.

They reposted it because, well, because it

didn't look all that strange, considering

the kind of people they were appointing to the new ministries.

Why would Larisa Guzeeva be any stranger? Okay,

you appointed as Minister of

Health some person who, if you google him,

the first thing that comes up is that he stole

tomography scanners—the first link about him says he stole

tomography scanners. As Minister of Sports they appointed

a person whose first link says he stole land and handed it over

to the Cherkizovsky Market (a notorious Moscow market). So why, if they

had appointed Larisa Guzeeva Minister of

Culture, would that be impossible? Larisa Guzeeva

would probably, in some sense, even be

more respectable than the person they

ultimately did

appoint. "Everything Is Stable" asks me:

"Comment on the situation with

Dolgopolov."

This is exactly what I've been talking about throughout my entire

program: the authorities will always

try to look for some kind of offense, and they

will keep trying to jail people

all the time,

claiming that someone offended or insulted them.

They will look for insult everywhere:

insult to the feelings of believers, the feelings of pensioners,

insult to government officials, and in

particular, in the case of the comedian Dolgopolov, someone

filed a complaint against him—some kind of

Orthodox Christian,

and of course that complaint should have been, under any

normal criminal procedure, thrown into the

trash, because stand-up is not

any kind of threat to society at all.

Nevertheless, some kind of

review of all this began. As I understand it, Dolgopolov

said today that he

is leaving the country, I mean,

it’s an idiotic situation that will repeat itself

many, many times, because this

state is constantly looking for someone to

take offense at, someone to lash out at

run after and jail, declaring that

we’ve taken offense, and actually right now

more than anything else, our state has

two main enemies, which I want

to talk about at the end of our program. By the way, you

by the way, I’d also like to draw your attention

to the fact that in the description of this video there is

a link to our new donation collection system

for donations.

Our new donation tool—it’s very important to us that

you use it today so that

we can at least see whether it works

or not; it’s a rather complicated

system. There are two things, two subjects that

came up, but judging by the intensity

of the media discussion, the main

enemies of Russia are, of course, Poland and

Alena Vodonaeva.

Everyone just descended on them. Let’s start

with Poland. So, Putin decided

to shut filthy mouths

filthy mouths—those who

are saying something untrue about

the Great Patriotic War (the Soviet term for the Eastern Front of World War II). Let’s

look at these fiery 42 minutes where

the man is absolutely fuming

and says that we will open the archives and

tell the truth—let’s listen, we

will definitely create a center

for archival documents, film, and

photographic materials, and we will shut the mouths of those who

try to twist history, present it in

a false light, and diminish the role of our

fathers, our grandfathers, our heroes who

died defending their homeland and defending

virtually the whole world from the brown plague

of Nazism. The filthy mouths that some people open

over there abroad in order

to achieve their short-term

political goals—we will shut them with truthful

documentary information.

“We’ll shut filthy mouths with truthful

documentary information.” I watched this

and thought: my God, what complete

idiots he must think all the people of our

country are. Well, I suppose he can’t

address them by directly calling them idiots,

because he understands that nobody

knows anything, nobody wants to remember anything. Seriously, the guy came out and said that

seriously, the guy came out and said that

that

we’ll open up and publish super-

truthful information in order to

tell

the truth about the war and shut filthy

mouths. Let’s see—who the hell was it that a year ago once again extended

once again extended

the secrecy regime for all documents related to

the war until 2040? Who did that?

Putin, Vladimir Vladimirovich, did.

By his decree, he extended the secrecy regime.

That means we do not know the truth about the war because

for all 20 years

of his presidency, 20 years in

power, Putin has extended the secrecy deadlines every year.

Well, 75 years have passed—75

years have already passed. Why is it still secret? And all

historians say so, and everyone is outraged, and

for a long time now people have been saying that we

may be mistaken about something there, or maybe we really don’t know the truth, so

let’s shut filthy mouths

and publish the archives. No—none of that happened.

Nobody was told anything. But in fact

there is actually a huge amount of

information about the Great Patriotic War,

in which our grandfathers died and

30 million of our

compatriots perished—but nobody knows exactly,

give or take 5 million, according to

different estimates. We don’t know why it is

classified. These are NKVD archives, and

Putin personally classified them until 2050. What the hell?

Why is this happening? For years there has been

discussion, and now he

comes out—the very person who classified them—and says, “We

will shut filthy mouths because

someone doesn’t know the truthful

information. We will tell the truthful

information.” First of all, the secret is simple:

do one simple thing—open all these

archives. In principle, there can be no secret

in the archives of the Great Patriotic

War. Let all historians have access to them.

He won’t do it—you’ll see, it won’t be done.

What there will be is some selection

of documents pulled out; whether they’re real or

fake, none of us will be able to tell.

It will once again be

propaganda, of course.

It’s not simple, but this is an important point for

also assessing this man,

this government: he sits there in front of veterans

who probably would also very much like

many of them would like to know some

additional information about why things happened

the way they did. Likewise, if you read

the memoirs of any veteran, from Zhukov

to an ordinary soldier

who wrote them in old age,

you will see that there is a huge

number of questions and endless

discussion of why everything was done

so incompetently and why we shed so much blood

when we should have paid a much smaller

price for that victory. Putin kept all of this

closed, and he sits there looking these

old men in the face and lies—brazenly,

simply brazenly lies to them, completely. And of course

he’s a scoundrel. As for the second enemy,

the enemy of the state, this really is

a somewhat comical situation

that has arisen. I can see Anton Maxim

asking me a question: “Alexei, what do you think?”

As for maternity capital for the first child,

will this increase Putin's popularity among

young people? Apparently, for them

that was built in from the start as the main

main PR angle of this

address: maternity capital for one child,

for the second child, for the third child, and

wrap it all up in joy, and everyone will be

happy. And in advance, Putin, even before

Alena Vodonaeva (a Russian TV personality) wrote any of her

posts, had already started shouting that there are

some scoundrels who are speaking

against this. In other words, this is another

example

of a discussion being imposed on us. They’re

trying to tell us that there is this good

government that

wants to give money to young mothers, young

families, wants to stimulate the birth rate,

and then there are some villains, scoundrels,

oppositionists, a fifth column, liberals and

"liberasts" and so on, and they’re against all

of it. But the thing is that this is,

first of all, completely false — this is a

made-up construct. But they started inflating

all of this, this whole fuss.

Alena Vodonaeva, a star of Dom-2 (a Russian reality TV show), is now

an Instagram diva of sorts. She writes a post, and

basically, when I read that post,

after all the huge

hysteria started, and Volodin — I’ll show you now —

began saying that she should be fined not 100

million rubles (about $1 million), and I think he also

said a bunch of other things there. So let’s

take a look, let’s read Vodonaeva’s post. She

writes: the demographic problem is not in the

size of maternity capital, but in Russians’

standard of living. If people start giving birth not because

they want to, then neither 50,011 rubles nor

free school meals will somehow help

feed the children.

People will take out loans and pay them off

from generation to generation. You may not

agree, at least, with the

tone of this post, but it is written in such a way

that between the lines you can kind of read

something like: well, so what, basically

let’s hand out money so that

these drunks keep having children. You

can’t talk like that, and you can’t treat this

that way. But the essence of the post is

that the real obstacle to

demographics is not some kind of

maternity-capital handout, but poverty in general.

If people live well, they

will have two children, three children, four

children. But when there’s nowhere to live, when it’s

impossible to rent an apartment,

when your salary is 30,000 rubles (about $300) and you

live at home, with your mother, and in the other room

there’s your bedridden grandmother, and

at the same time here are the wife and husband, and then

some child, and someone takes him to

daycare — that’s how a large

part of our country lives. There’s nowhere to live, people rent

some apartment and scrape by; 70

percent of their salary goes to rent.

In Moscow it’s impossible — I don’t know, you

have to struggle and basically work

for some enormous salary, and

fight with your employer for some kind of

pay raise just to rent some tiny room

or in order to rent some

one-room apartment, and you rent

that one-room place — what children are you talking about? You

won’t have them.

So the problem is poverty. But on this

Alena Vodonaeva thing, Volodin simply

jumped right on it. But again, they

were delighted that someone had written

something like that, insulting people,

writing about a bottle of vodka and about

poverty, and then the great defender

of the Russian people, Vyacheslav Volodin,

comes out against Alena Vodonaeva.

Let’s listen. So it turns out she just

went ahead and insulted people.

And her income from these social networks,

as you rightly say, has increased.

Paradoxical as it may be, in this case

it would be right for us

to use the possibilities provided by the law, and

we passed a law saying that those who insult

must be punished —

those who insult the citizens of our country. This is an insult

to the citizens of our country; she insulted the people

of the Russian Federation.

In this case, a fine of 100 million rubles

— let her pay it, and next time she won’t talk

like that. That’s what this is about.

Let her get up and work where people

earn the kind of money that doesn’t

allow them to buy much for themselves or solve the

problems they need to solve. Therefore,

on the contrary, more barriers should be put in their way,

so they don’t go on television and

do many, many other things — they should be treated as untouchables,

basically.

When you look at him, you really want to say,

you brazen, thieving mug.

“Let her get up and go work,”

“Let her get up and go work” —

no, you go and work, please,

so that we can finally understand with what

money your mother, Volodin, bought

an apartment worth several hundred million

rubles. We did an investigation about this,

we explained it all, and we were told nothing.

They never told us where this money came from,

where the millions, the hundreds

of millions came from for Volodin, who shows in his

declaration that it came from some oil-and-fat

business. Where did he get this oil-and-fat

business if he has spent a huge amount of time

in government service? There’s no answer to any of this. You

saw that several years ago we

showed Volodin’s estate on Istra-3 (likely a reference to a location near the Istra area),

with what money was all of this bought? So maybe

What really offends people, after all, is not Alena

Vodonaeva with her post.

It’s the fact that at the head of the State Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament) we have

someone completely inarticulate, who can’t

put two words together and who simply

stole everything in sight — truly a thief among thieves,

who openly owns property worth hundreds

of millions of rubles, and refuses

to explain to us where he got the money from. And at the same time

he’s like, “What are we even talking about? Tonight we’ll pass

a law and fine her 100 million.”

They really are

the masters of life, the way they endlessly

fine us millions for one thing or another,

millions for our investigations,

and they sit there like they really are the masters

of life, like, “We can pass any law at any time.”

“Someone said something I didn’t like — we’ll fine them

100 million, we’ll fine them 100

million, we’ll fine you 100

million. And then if anyone asks us

with what money my mother bought

an apartment in the city center for half a billion

rubles, we’ll just fine them the same

half a billion — and then we’ll buy another

apartment.” That’s what offends people more than anything else.

Not Alena Vodonaeva — she’s a private individual.

She can say whatever she wants. Alena

Vodonaeva may talk nonsense, although overall

she’s basically right when she says

that if you want to improve demographics,

you need to fight poverty. But if she

wrote something wrong, people will unsubscribe from her,

and she’ll earn less from

advertising. But how are we supposed to get rid of this dear

Vyacheslav Volodin?

This wonderful former chairman of the supervisory

board of the Higher School of Economics — it’s not clear.

Well, actually, it is clear: we really need

to deal with these

brazen people by every possible means. This is

far from an original thought, but I definitely

want to say in my first program

this year that the role

of Smart Voting and the role of fighting United

Russia are growing now. They need to be crushed.

Just look at how shameless they’ve become, how brazen they are.

They are simply, I mean directly,

acting with utter arrogance. They’re mocking us.

They’re holding some kind of

nationwide vote that means nothing.

They’re just laughing, insulting us, and

stealing. These people must be fought, and

we will definitely defeat them.

As Leonid Volkov writes in huge letters,

I should definitely mention that

if you are watching, or will watch, this

program offline, the link below still

works. Everything we do, we

can only do if you

support us, because as you can see for yourselves,

the pressure on us from the other side is also

pretty intense, and we can only hold out

if we have your support. So

follow this link and support

us. As for the voting and everything

else, in the near future, when we

see what the crooks’ and thieves’ exact plan

actually is,

we will announce our exact plan. But in any

case, each of us, every day, should

make our own small contribution to the struggle for

the Beautiful Russia of the Future (a slogan for a democratic future Russia), at least

I promise you that this year I will make that contribution

with redoubled effort.

Thank you very much to everyone who watched my

first broadcast. See you next Thursday.

Bye.

[music]