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[music]
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[music]
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we
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[music]
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Hello everyone. It's 8:18 p.m. in Moscow, which means
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that for the first time in 2018, I'm going live.
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Happy New Year to everyone.
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I hope everything goes well for you this
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year. Following the final tradition of our
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program, I should say: in the studio is
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Alexei Navalny.
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And also tell you what some official called me
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over the past week.
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But actually, nothing happened. All the government bodies
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did so little this week
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that nobody called me anything at all.
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So I have nothing to add except: okay, Alexei
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Navalny.
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Today we have a kind of
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relaxed post-New Year's
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broadcast with you, because honestly I don't really
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understand who's even watching livestreams right now.
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I really don't understand where
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all the Russians have gone. There's no one on the streets.
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It's cold, miserable, and there's no snow yet,
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at least in Moscow. In some
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shopping malls there's nobody either. It's unlikely everyone
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has gone abroad, so I don't
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know where people are. But maybe we'll
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find them all now, and maybe you're all
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sitting on YouTube right now and are about to
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watch this live broadcast.
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Don't forget to hit like today. I
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wanted today to spend more time answering your
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questions, devote more time to that,
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and ask you more about how you'd
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like Navalny LIVE to develop,
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because this year we're going to
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put effort into it, and we really need
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your feedback: what you want to see, what
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to do with it. For us, this is a strange kind of
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guerrilla television. We don't really know how
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to do it properly, so please
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guide us and point us in the right direction.
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Still, I do have one important task
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for this broadcast. It was given to me by our
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investigations department, which over the last
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two months has kept coming to me about it.
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They said: in the new year, the first
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broadcast absolutely has to be devoted to the fact
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that Volodya is old and Volodya needs to be replaced.
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And this really is a big problem
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for the investigations department.
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Volodya, please show us Volodya.
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Now you'll see in the corner of the screen—no,
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Volodya isn't appearing there. But our Volodya
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is not a person holding
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something in his hands. Volodya is actually
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the thing being held by a person. This is Georgy
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Alburov, who is holding our
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legendary drone named Volodya, which
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filmed all those famous dachas
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belonging to crooks, flying everywhere. And the overwhelming
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majority of the videos, especially over
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the last—well, over the last year or two,
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all the videos you've seen with footage
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showing
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various real estate properties—those were all
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shot by Volodya. Right now you're seeing
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the shamanic dance Georgy Alburov
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always performs before launching
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Volodya. There were lots of stories
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that amused us, claiming that
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of course all these video recordings, all these
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flyovers,
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must have been provided by some FSB operatives, these secret
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FSB drones filming everything,
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with various super-organizations leaking it to us.
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I think it was
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Zyuganov who said somewhere that these were
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CIA satellites,
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no less, helping us film,
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for example, Medvedev's dacha in Plyos,
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because of course filming there would be impossible—
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the security there is supposedly so tight. But now you're
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seeing unique footage of the drone, after filming
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the dacha in Plyos, flying back. Now you can see
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that very same FSB guy and CIA man
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who was operating this drone. There he is,
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flying around. And this person
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in shorts and a T-shirt is exactly the one
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standing on the shore—whoops—with that thing
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on his head, controlling the drone.
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That, in fact, is Georgy
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Alburov, who filmed the famous dacha
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of Medvedev in Plyos, which started
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the investigation *He Is Not Dimon to You*.
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But the thing is, Volodya has served us
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By the way, Volodya is apparently also called that because part of the name
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is just DJI, but somehow my partner
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named it Volodya, and so the drone Volodya
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served us faithfully for two years, but
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it's already obsolete because
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Volodya can only fly 2 kilometers (about 1.2 miles),
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while modern drones can fly 7 kilometers (about 4.3 miles).
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It's getting harder and harder for us
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to get close to certain sites.
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For example, when we were filming in Psekhako
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that same Medvedev dacha near Sochi,
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we had to launch it practically out of snowdrifts
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up in the mountains. In other words, with
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Volodya, you have to get fairly close
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to a guarded site, which in fact
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isn't always possible. So we
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need a new drone, and during this
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broadcast we want to raise money for this new
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drone.
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If you go to Georgy Alburov's Twitter,
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you'll see the exact specifications of what
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he wants to buy. I'll say that this drone,
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the one he's buying, is called
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some new, modern DJI
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Inspire 2. We need the drone, we need
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a camera for it, and we need some other
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additional things, mounts, and all
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those items. On Alburov's Twitter you
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can find the full specifications and links
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to all the prices. Altogether, it costs 410.
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thousand rubles if you buy it in the U.S. or
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in Hong Kong. In Russia, it costs about
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500,000 rubles, but we hope that
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some kind person will buy it for us one day
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in the U.S. and bring it to us — just, well, simply
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bring it over as a passenger, if the opportunity comes up, so
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the goal of this livestream is, in one stream or
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maybe over two streams, to raise 410
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thousand rubles, and let’s say all the money
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that you, uh, that you throw my way
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during this livestream will not
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go toward buying Volodya
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and most importantly, we need to choose
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a new name for this drone. We’ll name it
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in honor of the person who donates
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the most money. So, if your name is
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Pyotr and you donate the most
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money, it’ll be Drone Petya. If your name is
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Ramzan, then it’ll be Drone Ramzan. So
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as you can see, there’s now a progress bar for your
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donations — send them in
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the first prize is the name of the new drone. The second
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prize is
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a hoodie from our official store
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for the second-largest donation. Third is
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a stylish winter hat from our official
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store, and it will go to the person whose
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donation is the third largest. So
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send us money
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Sancho Panza asks me, Alexei,
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what did you like for New Year’s — a big
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herring under a fur coat (a traditional layered salad with herring and beets) or Olivier salad? I’m an
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Olivier person. All those New Year stereotypes
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including the ones about food, they absolutely
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apply to our family. It never happens
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that there’s neither one thing nor the other
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— no Olivier on the New Year’s table and no herring
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under a fur coat. No, when it comes to the New Year’s table, I
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absolutely love Olivier — that very
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Soviet kind. But actually, for the New Year
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I’d say, of course, in principle, probably
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not just me, but all Russian citizens
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need to slow down with the food right now — we’ve eaten
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a whole lot lately. You can send
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your questions to me on
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Twitter with the hashtag #Navalny2018, and I’ll
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be reading them live and
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trying to answer them. Best Baski asks
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me about Grudinin. There are a lot of questions
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about Grudinin — does Grudinin have a program,
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how do you view his movement? I’ve already
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answered: I view Grudinin fairly normally,
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and he seems more decent to me than many
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other candidates, but still
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he is not a real candidate, regardless
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of his platform, because
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as he himself recently said, he was asked
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where he was going for New Year’s,
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and he said: I’m going to Germany because I have a vacation package
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we bought it back when I still didn’t know
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that I’d be running for president — like, two
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months ago. But you can’t be
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a normal candidate if two months
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ago you didn’t know you were being nominated for
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president. That’s not how people run for president,
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so
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despite the fact that Grudinin seems like
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a decent enough guy, and he does have some kind of
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communist program, still
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that changes nothing. These elections
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have stopped being any kind of real election. And
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the thing I get asked about most, and I’ve
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received a ton of emails about, is this: what
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are you going to do, what are you going to be doing in
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the next six years, Masha asks. And in general
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there are lots and lots of questions about the plan
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for 2018 — what are we going to do
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in 2018? Well, in 2018
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you and I are going to do what is
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aimed at forcing them
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to reckon with
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us. Because 2018, for us
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especially at the start of the year, will be
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marked by the fact that they threw us
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out of the political system altogether and declared
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that these people here, the ones who are active,
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the active political class,
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regardless of whether they support
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Navalny or not, those
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people who want to go to elections, beat us,
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and are ready to compete with us — they
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must be barred from any participation
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in politics. That was said to us directly at the
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meeting of the Central Election
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Commission, and symbolically
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they kicked me off the ballot and put on it
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only those whom they themselves
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had chosen. And our task in 2018
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is to do exactly this by any means
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— make the authorities
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reckon with us. For that, all last year
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we were building a political system of influence. We
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built it. It is large — tens of
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thousands of people. It is our
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ability to do different things. It is
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our Navalny LIVE channel, it is the videos
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that we distribute, it is volunteers, it is
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election observers. That is, we know
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with absolute certainty that we
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represent tens of millions of people, and
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we are the only ones who have a real
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political structure — something no
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party has, and no candidate has.
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Take note: in Tyumen, right
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before New Year’s, some people also
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tried to stage Putin’s nomination. Well,
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they gathered outside and somehow wanted
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to vote the way we did
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in 20 cities. Nine people showed up there — 9
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people came to nominate Vladimir
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Putin in the city of Tyumen
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So we know with absolute certainty
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that we represent a great many people, and that we are
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truly a large — the largest —
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political structure, in fact
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the only real political structure. And we
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will use it in 2018 by every
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possible method to force them to reckon with
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to take us into account, so that
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we refuse to exist within a system in
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which they have simply declared us
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nonexistent people who
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are not supposed to influence anything, whose
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opinions can simply be thrown out and
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ignored. That will not happen, and we will not
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let it happen. To prevent that, we will
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do everything we can. That is why we are taking part in
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our electoral strike
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— a voters' strike — to show that
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this is not an election. And when you throw out
11:19
candidates, we do not consider that an election. We
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do not see ourselves as your serfs,
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your peasants — people you can line up however you like
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and who will still go vote anyway. So we
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are not going. We are urging everyone not to go, but
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at the same time we are organizing election observers, and
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of course, together with you we must also organize
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street demonstrations, because the current
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government is built this way: it has cut us off from
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absolutely everything. We do not exist in newspapers,
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we do not exist on television. There are only YouTube channels,
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and they do not let us into elections. So, in
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essence, there can be no real public
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show of strength other than taking to the streets.
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That is why, on the 28th, I
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urge everyone to take part in the street
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actions as part of the strike. It will take place in
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a large number of cities. In the description of
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this video, you can find a link,
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find your city, and join. Why
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is it necessary to take part in all this? I'll explain
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using an example that is not connected either to these
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elections or, seemingly, directly connected at all
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to the events that
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are happening. Let me show you now
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a chart that was just shown on air
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right before me by Vladimir Milov
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on the program *Where's the Money?* You can see here the increase in
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the gasoline excise tax.
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What is the gasoline excise tax? It is something that you
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pay whether you are a driver or not — it does not matter who you are.
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You pay it because it is built into the price
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of bread, into the price of milk, into the price of flour,
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into the price of every item
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sold in a store. And of course, in addition,
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if you are a driver, then you literally
12:47
pay it yourself. You can see on this chart: here is the price
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of oil — it was rising, and the excise tax was rising too; then
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the price of oil fell, and the gasoline excise tax
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still kept rising.
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Now the price of oil is recovering, but still
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the gasoline excise tax is increasing. Why?
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Why are taxes on Gazprom being reduced, while
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the gasoline excise tax — that is, a tax on us,
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a tax on all the country's residents — keeps going up?
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The point is that decisions of this kind
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are key decisions for the country's economy.
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This is, among other things, inflation. A rise in
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excise taxes
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on gasoline will significantly affect
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inflation. No one even asked us. In this
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country, there was not even any discussion at all.
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None. And not only us — they did not ask
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anyone: not the Communists, not A Just Russia (a Russian political party),
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well, they do not ask them either. No one
13:29
is ever asked. They just sit silently in the State Duma (the lower house of Russia's parliament) and
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press the button. This government believes
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it can do absolutely anything,
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whatever it wants,
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even things that are absurd from an economic point of view,
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because you cannot raise the excise tax
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on gasoline right now. Instead, you need
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to look for other mechanisms to increase
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tax revenues — for example, as I already said,
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Gazprom, Rosneft, oil and gas — all
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these wonderful companies that do not
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want to pay taxes or dividends.
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Instead, they are squeezing the population, squeezing small
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business, medium-sized business, and business in general, and
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no one asks anyone anything.
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That is why our strike, our movement
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this year is not even about saying, "Look at us,
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we're so great, we're so
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cool — wow, what a cute GIF, that's me with
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a corgi when I was filming
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the video about Shuvalov." It's not about us being
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so impressive and active and having carried out
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nominations in every city. They do not ask us.
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In fact, they do not ask anyone
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at all. People, in principle, are not
14:25
represented; their opinions are not represented.
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No one is even discussing these things.
14:29
There are no people,
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no party or movement that goes to
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the Duma podium
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or at least onto some TV talk show, onto
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any platform at all, and says, "Wait a second, folks,
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we are against raising excise taxes. You do not have the
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right to raise them. Debate us.
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There are no such debates. No one
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discusses this. So on January 28, whether you are for me
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or against me, if you believe that
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your voice should count, if the government
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must take your opinion into account,
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sign up and come out, because
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until that happens, nothing
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good will happen. Let me remind you that
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during this broadcast, we are currently
15:07
raising money for Volodya's
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new quadcopter for the Anti-Corruption Foundation
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that will be able to fly much
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longer and film the dachas and houses of crooks
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much better. So send money;
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it will all go toward the quadcopter, and we will report
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on everything that
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we collect. The person who sends
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the largest amount as of now will get to name
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this quadcopter. By the way, I just
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thought: if it's a woman, then
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the quadcopter will be Masha, or maybe Elena — well,
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that would be fine too. In general, we're for
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gender equality.
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Social asks: "Alexei, if
15:41
you become president, what will you
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do after two consecutive terms?
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Will you leave politics, or continue?"
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to lead a party or something else, you know.
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You see, in principle, this is how it is for us.
15:50
In Russia, that sounds like a trick question.
15:51
If you become president, what will you...
15:53
...do afterward? Why? Because...
15:55
...we simply don’t know any presidents...
15:57
...who, broadly speaking, did anything...
15:59
...after leaving the presidency, because...
16:02
...more often than not, country leaders were...
16:04
...leaders for life, apart from Gorbachev.
16:06
And Yeltsin died fairly soon after...
16:09
...leaving the presidency. I believe that...
16:12
...a former president can do many things.
16:15
They can do whatever they want, really—if they want...
16:16
...to teach, teach; if they want, write books; if they want...
16:19
...go fishing.
16:19
It’s normal when a person becomes...
16:21
...president...
16:22
...and then leaves the office and...
16:24
...does something else. In America, for example, you...
16:27
...often see these...
16:29
...photographs.
16:29
The former presidents who are still alive—there are...
16:32
...about five or six of them—they’re these funny...
16:35
...old guys, or not quite old guys, but...
16:38
...Obama isn’t even an old guy, really—he has...
16:40
...plenty to do. And in that sense, we need to...
16:43
...create a country in which—build...
16:45
...a country in which a person becomes...
16:46
...president, then stops being...
16:48
...president, and then goes on to do...
16:50
...something else. After all, it’s an ordinary...
16:52
...profession—a very important profession, a very...
16:54
...public profession, but still only a...
16:57
...profession. Citizens hire you...
16:59
...to serve them. 132 new questions.
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I’ll try to pick one now. Well, here...
17:07
...a lot of people are writing to me about Grudinin.
17:09
By the way, I noticed that they’ve started...
17:11
...going after him pretty aggressively in the media...
17:14
...and on social media.
17:16
I don’t know who benefits from that, but...
17:18
...it is happening. But once again I just want to...
17:19
...urge you: there’s no point in...
17:22
...analyzing all of this. It’s foolish. They want...
17:25
...that from us—they want me to sit here now...
17:26
...criticizing them, praising them, or digging through...
17:29
...their platform. It doesn’t matter...
17:32
...because it does not affect the outcome...
17:33
...of the election. But ask yourselves this:
17:35
Will anything be decided politically...
17:38
...in this election? No. Is any of the actual...
17:41
...current candidates really challenging, or at least...
17:44
...trying to challenge...
17:45
...Putin’s first place? No. So you and I...
17:48
...know perfectly well that Putin...
17:50
...will get more than 70 percent in this election.
17:53
And all this supposed math...
17:55
...this attempt to engineer some clever...
17:58
...voting results—is doomed to...
18:00
...failure, because they sat down and figured out...
18:03
...what numbers they need to get...
18:05
...more than 70 percent, and they...
18:08
...took them, and they will get the result they want.
18:10
What matters for us is simply not to take part in this...
18:12
...indecent, shameful spectacle. They’re boosting dislikes?
18:19
Come on, as usual...
18:21
...why the dislikes? I don’t know how many...
18:23
...people are watching online right now, just...
18:25
...everyone hit like at the same time and then...
18:27
...we’ll have more likes than dislikes.
18:30
A user asks me:
18:34
Why is the cat—Chuck Norris—looking sad?
18:36
It’s drawn on the wall to your left. Once...
18:39
...this cat that’s drawn there—you can see it in...
18:41
...the little window, but if I block it with my back...
18:43
...it looks like it disappeared temporarily. There were just...
18:45
...a ton of comments asking where...
18:48
...the cat had gone. I was sure you didn’t even...
18:49
...notice it.
18:51
[music]
18:53
Are your campaign headquarters going to make proper...
18:56
...leaflets? asks Blanca Bianco.
18:59
We’d like to distribute material that is...
19:01
...more substantive and better argued.
19:03
Yes, of course, we’re going to start doing that. Right now...
19:05
...we’ve made the first strike leaflet. You...
19:08
...can download it from the website.
19:09
But we’ll be doing much more. This was...
19:12
...just the first one; before New Year’s, we...
19:13
...quickly put something together. There are a lot...
19:16
...of questions about Iran, and everyone...
19:22
...is asking me to say something about what...
19:25
...is happening in Iran, and to explain what...
19:28
...is going on there. Well, listen, guys, I can...
19:30
...honestly tell you that I myself don’t understand...
19:32
...what is happening in Iran. I know one thing:
19:34
...I know the same as you do: on December 28...
19:38
...protests began in Iran. They...
19:40
...began unexpectedly on the outskirts of the country.
19:43
These were fairly large-scale protests which...
19:45
...however, as I understand it, were somewhat...
19:47
...smaller than the famous protests of 2009.
19:51
Back then, they were connected with the obvious...
19:54
...falsification of voting results. Now...
19:56
...they were tied to more social...
19:57
...causes. It all began over rising...
20:01
...egg prices. Let’s take a look—we have...
20:03
...literally 30 seconds of what the...
20:05
...protests in Iran looked like.
20:45
Well, you saw it—these protests...
20:47
...were...
20:48
...fairly aggressive in nature.
20:50
They were accompanied by a great deal of...
20:52
...violence. At least twenty people...
20:54
...have died, according to the latest reports.
20:57
It’s quite difficult to make sense of it, because at...
20:59
...the same time there were both...
21:01
...pro-government protests and...
21:03
...anti-government protests.
21:04
Naturally, the authorities first and foremost...
21:07
...are trying to muddy the waters and...
21:08
...mix everything up. But remember how it was in...
21:10
...Russia in 2011.
21:12
How it was there on March 26 and June 12...
21:15
...propaganda constantly spreads...
21:17
...monstrous lies, of course, and now...
21:19
...official Iran, official Tehran...
21:22
says that, of course, of course,
21:24
these protests were financed by Israel and
21:27
the U.S., by some foreign enemies, and that these
21:31
people who took part in the protests
21:33
are all supposedly some kind of foreign
21:36
agents receiving money from abroad, that is,
21:38
it is simply a complete, exact copy of
21:41
what the Kremlin says—the very same
21:44
lying propaganda; just replace America with
21:47
Israel and Saudi Arabia, and there it is
21:50
something absolutely identical, all from the same
21:53
playbook. Every authoritarian regime
21:55
operates according to the same manual.
21:57
It appeared right on time, so, so
22:03
from that point of view, we learned nothing new
22:06
about how
22:08
an authoritarian regime deals with protests.
22:10
As I understand it, these protests are now
22:13
mostly suppressed, but an interesting
22:16
I tried to look into it: I asked an acquaintance of mine,
22:19
who has contacts in Iran,
22:21
to write to them and ask for their opinion.
22:23
And he is a lawyer working in Tehran,
22:26
that is, a representative of that kind of
22:28
educated class, and the response was roughly
22:31
that basically, no, we are not taking part in these protests;
22:33
we were active in 2009,
22:35
but now we are not, and we do not know
22:39
anyone who is participating in them, so
22:41
nothing of the sort that the
22:44
progressive
22:45
part of society would be involved in is happening now. This is
22:49
very interesting, because right now
22:51
it was not the same people protesting as in
22:53
2009. In 2009, the protests in Iran
22:57
were similar to our 2011 protests in Russia, whereas
22:59
now this is, on the one hand, a kind of
23:02
social protest, a regional protest,
23:04
and a protest of the poor against the economic
23:08
dead end the country is in,
23:10
but at the same time with a clearly anti-clerical
23:14
and anti-clerical undertone, judging by the slogans—
23:17
against the dominance of religion and against these
23:20
Islamic Revolutionary Guard structures,
23:22
against repression. In other words, it is a fiery,
23:24
interesting movement that is definitely not
23:28
a movement of some Iranian
23:30
hipsters, but presumably we will learn more over time
23:33
about what was happening there.
23:35
I want to say one thing, and what is obvious is
23:39
what numerous
23:40
studies show: these regimes, like in Iran
23:44
or the one they are now trying to build in
23:46
Russia, which is moving in leaps and bounds
23:48
somewhere toward that kind of
23:51
regime, like in Iran or Belarus,
23:53
are precisely what generate instability.
23:56
They boast and say that their main
23:59
achievement is some kind of stability, but
24:02
I read an interesting study, and
24:04
next time I will talk about it in more detail,
24:06
including what it is called, so that you can perhaps
24:07
read it yourselves if you are interested. It
24:09
analyzed all postwar
24:11
authoritarian regimes of this kind. The main
24:14
conclusion of the study was that
24:15
the likelihood of instability in such
24:18
regimes, which try to create stability through repression,
24:20
is
24:22
significantly higher than in any
24:24
democratic country. Yes, you look at a
24:25
democratic country and there is
24:27
a government crisis all the time,
24:29
someone cannot form a
24:31
government, these people won the election, those
24:33
people lost the election, and it seems that
24:37
democracy is weak, the leaders are weak, and they
24:40
are sitting on a volcano and are constantly being replaced.
24:42
But from the point of view of real, long-term
24:45
stability, of course a democratic
24:47
country is far better, more reliable, and again,
24:51
more stable. And all these guys who
24:54
say that they are protecting their
24:56
country from some
24:58
outside enemies who are trying
24:59
to undermine stability are in fact almost
25:02
certain to end in some kind of
25:05
problems, or there will be problems during
25:07
their time in power,
25:10
as is happening in Russia, as
25:11
it is happening in Iran. So this is one more
25:14
reason why we must
25:15
take part in our strikes, why we
25:17
must go out into the streets: Putin is leading
25:20
the country toward instability. If there are
25:23
any upheavals in Russia,
25:24
this regime will fall sooner or later, because
25:27
nobody needs it, it is meaningless, it
25:29
will fall, and the longer it sits in the Kremlin,
25:32
the greater the likelihood that its fall will
25:35
take place with some kind of
25:36
upheaval—and it is he who is to blame for that,
25:39
not the people who come out to
25:41
peaceful rallies. We, paradoxical as it may seem,
25:43
are coming out in favor of stability,
25:45
against revolution—and revolution means, I do not know,
25:48
burning buildings,
25:49
what we are now seeing in Iran, and it will
25:52
happen precisely because, because
25:55
Putin, because these people want to sit
25:56
in power for decades. Twitter: 1. Alexei
26:01
In the event of victory, what will you do with
26:02
the church people? We will do nothing
26:04
to the church people. I assure you,
26:06
let the church people exist separately, and we
26:08
will exist separately, as it is written in
26:10
the Constitution. Please, let the church people
26:12
collect their donations
26:14
and manage them. We will not even
26:16
tax them, but they simply must not
26:17
run the state, as is happening now.
26:19
I remind you that at the bottom
26:22
of the screen you can see a progress bar—we are
26:25
raising money for our quadcopter
26:27
because the quadcopter named Volodya
26:29
has become obsolete, and we need a new one. We
26:31
need to raise 410,000 rubles (about several thousand U.S. dollars), and
26:34
the person who sends the largest
26:36
Donate the full amount.
26:38
He
26:39
will give the quadcopter his name, and
26:43
for some reason that's what it's called, into battle, so there you go.
26:45
Ramzan to Ramzan, so if Musa is a file, then Dimon is a file.
26:48
So it will be called Dimon. So, Alexei, what do you think
26:53
about the idea that we need to monitor
26:56
the livestreams from polling stations on March 18?
26:59
Ozero 20 asks me. Well, it's the right
27:02
idea, absolutely right, and in general
27:04
it's quite obvious. The other issue is
27:06
that we remember very well what happened with
27:09
the livestreams in 2012, and later
27:11
Putin promised a lot about what that meant:
27:13
watch the livestreams, you'll be able to
27:15
download everything in full, then there will be
27:17
video distribution. First of all, it was almost
27:19
impossible to obtain any
27:21
video recordings after the election, and secondly,
27:24
there was practically nowhere—really nowhere at all—
27:26
even when people brought in evidence: look, you
27:28
say that 1,000 people passed through this polling station,
27:30
but we watch the video and see that
27:32
only 200 actually voted. Even in such
27:35
completely obvious cases, or when
27:36
the falsification was simply recorded
27:38
on video,
27:39
the court could do nothing. But the idea is
27:42
absolutely correct. Of course, right now
27:44
we are working through all these things technically:
27:48
how to get access to these videos,
27:49
how they can be used, and how they can be
27:53
used. Arkady Gorelkin asks me:
27:56
Hello, Alexei. A strike and
27:58
rallies are good, but those are only two
28:00
methods of nonviolent resistance, and
28:01
198
28:02
why not use others as well?
28:04
You're absolutely right, Arkady. We should
28:06
use every method: strikes,
28:10
rallies—well, what we're doing now,
28:12
the voters' strike. There can also be
28:13
real strikes. Just today I read that
28:16
a woman—I don't remember her name, unfortunately—
28:19
a Nobel Peace Prize laureate,
28:22
of Iranian origin, an Iranian woman,
28:24
called on the people of Iran not to pay taxes,
28:27
not to pay utility bills, and to withdraw money from
28:29
state banks. There are
28:31
various methods of nonviolent
28:33
resistance. We should use those among
28:35
them that are effective and that we
28:37
know how to carry out. That's why I call on people to do
28:40
all the things—the most obvious ones, and the most
28:43
necessary right now are: a voters'
28:46
strike; if you don't want to take part, then make sure
28:48
others don't go—rather, go monitor the elections;
28:51
and come out
28:52
to peaceful rallies. Those are the three main
28:54
methods. But of course we should use others
28:56
as well, and do so constantly. Friton
29:00
asks: how much land can be given
29:02
to citizens—1 hectare, 4 hectares? How much
29:04
land do we have? How many hectares would be
29:06
appropriate, as mentioned in the relevant
29:08
law? Well, you know that we have
29:10
the so-called Far Eastern Hectare law
29:12
(a Russian program granting 1 hectare of land in the Far East).
29:12
We also monitored it for
29:15
implementation and for possible corruption,
29:17
and we saw that corruption
29:19
really was present. As soon as they started
29:21
distributing land, the system crashed, and then
29:24
it turned out that the most investment-
29:25
attractive plots, first of all
29:27
in Primorye,
29:28
already belonged to certain people. But overall
29:30
this whole program has failed.
29:33
Practically no one wants to receive a
29:35
Far Eastern hectare, because, well,
29:37
it's just a gimmick.
29:38
If you live in Moscow, or Samara, or
29:40
Ufa, why would you need this Far Eastern hectare?
29:42
You can't do anything with it. You can't sell it;
29:45
that's explicitly prohibited. On one
29:47
hectare, doing agriculture is not really feasible.
29:48
No—even if you were lucky enough
29:51
to get a hectare near, I don't know,
29:54
a road, near electricity, near
29:57
gas, you still can't really do anything
29:58
with it. It's one hectare. You need a more
30:01
complex arrangement—getting 10 people,
30:03
20 people involved. And of course, on 99 percent of
30:07
the lands where these hectares are offered
30:10
in the Far East, they're simply unsuitable
30:12
for living. And who needs hectares
30:14
in Magadan, in Kolyma (a remote region in Russia's Far East)? Who needs them?
30:17
Probably only somewhere very close to
30:20
a city, where you could build a shop,
30:22
a shopping center, or an apartment building—yes, there
30:24
sure, let's distribute it there, and then maybe
30:26
build something.
30:27
But overall, this land is of no use to anyone. It is
30:30
worth zero rubles and zero kopecks, so in
30:33
the European part of the country
30:36
we have so much land that we can give it out
30:38
to anyone who actually wants to do something
30:41
with it, or at least sell it
30:43
if you managed to resell it and
30:46
make money from it through speculation—
30:48
well, thank God, it's not exactly in high demand now,
30:50
so let people buy and resell it; the person who bought it
30:53
will at least pay taxes on it.
30:55
So I believe that, of course,
30:58
bringing land into market circulation should
31:00
happen more actively. It's just absurd:
31:02
we live in the largest country on
31:05
planet Earth, and we're handing out one hectare each
31:07
somewhere in places where even bears hardly ever
31:10
go. That doesn't work and cannot
31:12
work. We need, in the European part
31:14
of the country first and foremost,
31:15
to bring land into market circulation. So,
31:20
they're asking about the film about Putin.
31:22
There are several questions, but I'm not revealing
31:24
any secrets
31:26
or any plans of the investigations department. Well, if
31:29
by the way, if we raise money today...
31:32
for our quadcopter,
31:35
then it will make any kind of work like that easier for us.
31:39
A reminder that today we are
31:40
raising money for a new drone. The person
31:42
who makes the largest
31:43
donation will get to name this drone.
31:47
Why not stage a mass act of sabotage
31:50
on TV? asks Ivan Cheskidov.
31:51
Excellent question, Cheskidov. And how exactly do you
31:54
propose to do it—burn down the Ostankino
31:56
Tower? But it already burned once, and as I understand it,
31:58
mass television broadcasting
32:00
does not depend very much on
32:03
the Ostankino Tower. Back in 2011,
32:07
I was also fascinated by various
32:10
ideas about cable networks. You know
32:13
that most often, when people watch TV—
32:15
well, you probably don't, but those who do—
32:17
people who watch television
32:19
receive it not through a radio antenna
32:21
but through a cable network, and theoretically
32:23
you could tap into a cable network and
32:24
broadcast the film *He Is Not Dimon to You* there, but
32:27
we found no
32:28
simple technical way to do it.
32:31
It's all very complicated. Besides, it would be
32:32
a direct violation of the law.
32:34
I think that in a case like this, since
32:37
they use our money to feed us horrible,
32:39
monstrous propaganda, it might be justified,
32:42
but unfortunately, technically
32:46
it's not very feasible. So, someone asks me:
32:49
Will there be detentions on January 28?
32:53
I don't want to spend my 14th birthday
32:56
in a police station. I'm on Fomicheva—well, where
32:58
could you possibly spend your
33:00
14th birthday in a better place? And what could be a more memorable
33:04
14th birthday? I don't think there will
33:06
be any detentions. In any case,
33:07
we submitted a preliminary application a month in advance,
33:11
then we'll submit another one 15 days ahead, as
33:14
required by law, and in that sense we, on our
33:17
side, will be 100 percent
33:19
in compliance with the law and with the rulings
33:21
of the Constitutional Court in our country, and
33:24
the Constitution itself in our country is
33:27
on our side.
33:28
But theoretically, something could
33:32
happen. But I want to point out that there were
33:33
detentions on March 26, and there were detentions
33:36
later too, though far fewer. There were, and
33:38
there were people—please, if anyone has the exact figures,
33:41
as I recall, around 400 complaints in total
33:44
have been filed by various organizations. You—
33:48
you're only 14 years old—go out to the
33:52
rally for your country and for your own
33:55
future, for your own prospects.
33:57
Because as long as these ghouls in power
33:59
remain where they are, you have no prospects—
34:01
no chance of a normal job, a normal
34:04
quality of life in this country. There are things
34:07
more important than spending three hours
34:09
at a police station after being detained. But by the way,
34:13
I'm sure nothing like that will happen, at least
34:15
on our side we will do
34:16
everything entirely, entirely legally. Will you
34:22
run in 2024?
34:24
Nikanor asks me. Nikanor, under the
34:28
law that the Central Election Commission cited,
34:30
I am generally barred from
34:31
running for anything at all. There were
34:33
many questions about whether I could run for parliament
34:36
or for any other elected
34:38
office. Strictly speaking, I would only be able to after 2030,
34:41
which means not for a very long time yet.
34:43
But I don't care about those laws,
34:44
Ivan, Nikanor—we should all
34:46
not give a damn about them.
34:47
The issue isn't the law; the issue is that we
34:49
are still allowing them to disregard us and
34:52
ignore us. That's why we must
34:54
act accordingly, including now in the
34:56
form of a strike, so that they announce
34:58
new elections—or, without even announcing new ones,
35:01
register us for the next election.
35:02
Register us.
35:04
Let real, leading independent candidates
35:06
run—whether that's me or another candidate.
35:09
By that time there may be a candidate
35:10
far better. But simply judging by
35:13
what they are doing now, they will never register
35:15
anyone. Never. And after 2030 they will
35:17
simply fabricate a new criminal case
35:20
against me and say once again,
35:22
"Wait another ten years." So we must
35:25
force them to scrap these laws and
35:28
stop carrying out these illegal actions.
35:30
Oh, the U.S. State Department just donated 2,018 rubles.
35:33
Excellent. So, the broadcast was interrupted—what
35:37
is happening? I don't know. I can't see that
35:39
the stream was interrupted. Maybe
35:41
we've had some kind of
35:42
internet outage.
35:44
Good evening, asks Naumov.
35:46
Yevgeny: I'm interested to know whether hackers
35:48
helped you in any way by providing hidden
35:51
information. Yes, thank you. Well, Yevgeny,
35:53
at the beginning of our broadcast I showed
35:55
a video of how
35:58
an employee of the investigations department, Burov,
36:00
was flying a drone over Medvedev's dacha (country house),
36:02
and that's how we do everything. Why would we need
36:05
hackers? What hidden information would we need if
36:08
in Plyos, a town with a population of just a few thousand, a huge, gigantic
36:10
residence worth 20 billion rubles
36:12
has been built for Medvedev, and
36:14
every dog in Ivanovo Region knows about it?
36:17
Not to mention the town of Plyos itself. What hackers
36:19
are you talking about? We don't need any hackers. We
36:21
did indeed use hacked correspondence in the film *He Is Not Dimon to You*,
36:23
namely hacked correspondence
36:25
from Medvedev, but by that time
36:27
it had already been sitting on the internet for two and a half years,
36:29
it's just that not everyone—everyone was too
36:31
lazy to read it. But we were not
36:33
too lazy.
36:34
We actually read it, unfortunately.
36:37
Corruption in Russia is so blatant that
36:38
you don’t need any hackers at all. But what kind of
36:40
What exactly are hackers supposed to reveal to you—that
36:43
Putin’s dollar billionaires—that
36:45
he became a billionaire because Putin
36:47
gave him preferential loans? No
36:49
hackers are needed for that, unfortunately.
36:52
To investigate in Russia, can you
36:56
go as an election monitor
36:58
if you’re underage? People ask me that.
36:59
By the way, it’s not called a “caretaker,”
37:01
it’s an observer, although “caretaker” is a great
37:04
word. A minor cannot serve
37:07
as an observer—I mean in the legal
37:10
sense, an observer who comes in with
37:12
official paperwork, says “I’m an observer,” and is
37:14
given a badge, and then sits there and
37:17
does whatever observers do there. But a minor
37:21
or really any person can probably be
37:24
in a different role—not an observer, but
37:25
more like a watcher: someone who stands by
37:27
the entrance with one of those clickers, you know, like the ones
37:28
flight attendants use on planes, and counts
37:30
how many actual people physically entered the polling station.
37:32
That’s the most important thing. So, Evgeny—Alexei,
37:38
if you become president, will you ban or
37:40
allow painting tree trunks?
37:41
It just seems to me like the dumbest thing in
37:43
our country. Well, I’m not ready to answer
37:46
that question. I’m simply not informed enough. As I
37:49
understand it, tree trunks were painted so that
37:51
hares, deer,
37:53
and chipmunks wouldn’t gnaw on
37:56
those trees. I don’t know—rats maybe, who
37:59
knows what eats them in urban conditions.
38:01
So I’m not ready right now to say that there’s no
38:02
need to paint them. Maybe environmentalists
38:04
would say it is necessary. I don’t know enough about it
38:07
at the moment—I’ll look into the issue. Some
38:10
groups on VKontakte (a Russian social network) have sold out and are posting
38:12
all sorts of nonsense about you. Sadly, writes
38:14
Konstantin Yuldashev. Elections mean money. These
38:17
some VKontakte groups didn’t just now
38:19
sell out—they’ve been writing nonsense about me for
38:22
many, many years. Fine, VKontakte groups—
38:25
but there are bought-off journalists, entire TV channels,
38:28
whole workforces that have sold out in order to
38:30
write nonsense about me, about you.
38:33
Konstantin, you have to treat this
38:34
calmly. You just need to pay
38:36
attention to such groups and leave those
38:38
groups, call them out, label them for what
38:41
they are—sellouts,
38:42
mercenaries, and treat them
38:46
in a special, clearly defined
38:48
way.
38:48
That’s how the admins of these groups should be treated. But this is
38:51
what the authorities do: they bribe
38:54
people, they corrupt people, and for money these
38:58
people spread lies. That’s how it works.
39:00
We can counter it only
39:04
with our own media outlets
39:06
and our own work. We were asked: let’s
39:09
talk about it. Amazing, baffling things
39:13
are happening in Syria, and no one can
39:16
figure out what happened. At first
39:20
there were reports that a terrible
39:24
tragedy had occurred: two people had died, apparently
39:26
helicopter pilots. Either they crashed in a
39:27
helicopter,
39:28
or they were shot down, or the helicopter ran into
39:31
difficult conditions. Then, I think yesterday,
39:34
the newspaper *Kommersant* reported
39:36
in a news story that, it turns out,
39:39
our base had come under attack, and during that attack
39:42
seven aircraft were destroyed and
39:45
two people were killed. Frankly, that
39:48
sounds pretty shocking, because
39:49
seven aircraft, including a new
39:52
plane—those losses in any case amount
39:54
all those losses,
39:55
material losses, not to mention
39:57
human lives,
39:58
are measured in
39:59
billions of rubles. Seven aircraft is
40:02
almost a third of our
40:07
air contingent currently stationed in Syria.
40:09
That means these are enormous losses,
40:10
absolutely monstrous ones. The Ministry of
40:13
Defense, of course, immediately denied it.
40:15
But the Ministry of Defense—well, it
40:17
lies all the time.
40:18
Analysts from CIT, a non-profit,
40:23
as I understand it, organization—
40:24
well, basically activists who monitor
40:26
the situation and debunk various fake stories—
40:29
they also said, essentially siding with
40:32
the Ministry of Defense, that the newspaper
40:34
*Kommersant* was most likely lying, because
40:37
if that many
40:39
aircraft had really been destroyed, and it were such a major ISIS victory,
40:41
then they of course would have spread
40:43
video of it. They would have—you can see now
40:47
a post from the CIT community—there would have been
40:50
some footage, some organization
40:52
within ISIS would have claimed
40:54
responsibility, and none of that
40:56
happened, which is very unlike
40:59
how this usually happens. And overall
41:03
I was inclined to agree.
41:04
But now, literally two hours before the broadcast,
41:07
photos finally started to appear
41:09
of those very aircraft—damaged, not
41:12
destroyed, but obviously damaged to
41:14
such an extent that they can no longer
41:15
be used. And now it is being claimed that
41:17
it was not seven aircraft but nine, and
41:20
up to two people were killed, and the Ministry of
41:23
Defense, already under the weight of
41:24
the evidence, is saying that two
41:26
people were killed during the shelling.
41:29
Not because of bad weather conditions—
41:31
the helicopter pilots.
41:32
And all of this once again raises the two most
41:37
important questions: first of all,
41:40
who attacked our base so effectively and
41:43
destroyed a third of our air group
41:46
if we defeated ISIS, if Putin completely
41:48
Recently, it was said that Russia had won,
41:51
that it had crushed and destroyed ISIS,
41:54
that it had killed all its leaders and commanders. But then who,
41:56
could have done this? After all, this is still
41:58
our most heavily guarded base in that
42:02
area, protected both by Assad's troops and by us,
42:05
and then suddenly things like this happen.
42:07
So it turns out we did not kill off ISIS after all,
42:09
we did not defeat ISIS. That's the first point. The second, and more important one, is this:
42:13
more important question: in principle, what
42:15
is happening there, and what are we doing there? Why
42:19
did all of this happen at all, and why are we
42:22
going to pay these billions of rubles
42:25
for the destroyed aircraft, not to mention
42:27
the priceless human lives that were
42:29
lost there, while their relatives are suffering?
42:32
Why is any of this necessary at all? What
42:34
is happening in Syria that matters so much to me
42:36
or to you? What for? Why are you and I ready to
42:40
pay for all this and support it?
42:41
Can anyone explain it to us? Once again, we
42:44
come back to the question of why
42:45
people need to go out to rallies, why we need
42:47
to demand that they
42:49
take us into account, so that they explain to us
42:51
what is happening in Syria and what exactly we are doing
42:54
there in the first place.
42:55
As of the latest estimate this summer, the operation in Syria
42:58
was put at 140 billion rubles
43:01
most likely much, much more.
43:03
Remember, we once did a kind of
43:07
just-for-fun calculation, but still
43:09
it revealed an interesting fact: we calculated
43:11
how much the diesel fuel cost that was burned by
43:16
the aircraft-carrying cruiser Pyotr Veliky when it
43:19
sailed to Syria and back. The fuel alone
43:21
came to 128 million rubles — and that
43:24
was the minimum; in reality it was probably much more.
43:26
Uh...
43:27
Repairs, according to the state
43:29
news agency TASS, for that cruiser, "Kuzya"
43:32
— Admiral Kuznetsov —
43:33
will cost 40 billion rubles after the deployment.
43:37
That's more than the budget
43:40
of a city with over a million residents.
43:41
Not every million-plus city
43:44
has a budget that large — 40 billion rubles.
43:47
Because it was barely staying afloat,
43:48
and all of its
43:51
diesel systems failed. Forty billion has to be spent.
43:53
Why? For what? Why did this
43:56
happen at all? Who needed any of this in the first place?
43:59
We were given an explanation: supposedly, we had to
44:01
fight in Syria because there are a great many
44:04
terrorists there, and some of those
44:07
terrorists came from Russia. And the FSB
44:10
told us that from the CIS countries alone
44:12
nearly 5,000
44:14
militant terrorists had gone to Syria; of those, 3,000
44:18
were from Dagestan and Chechnya, mainly
44:21
from Dagestan. So, supposedly, we had to kill them there,
44:24
crush them, bomb them, so that they
44:27
would not come back here and start blowing things up
44:29
here. And that sounds a little strange, because
44:31
if our main task, our main
44:34
problem, is that here
44:35
in Dagestan, or anywhere else — I don't know,
44:37
in Saratov or Vologda —
44:40
terrorists emerge and then go there, then maybe
44:43
we should spend money here so that in
44:45
Dagestan these terrorists do not appear in the first place —
44:49
in particular, by fighting injustice in
44:51
Dagestan, in particular by fighting
44:53
lawlessness of various kinds, so that there is no
44:55
breeding ground on which
44:57
these Islamist terrorists arise.
44:59
So that
45:01
their propaganda works less effectively, perhaps.
45:04
That needs to be done in any case. Well,
45:06
3,000 people left Dagestan for Syria.
45:08
Some of them we killed there, some we did not. But
45:11
how are we going to make sure they do not
45:12
come back? They can return, they
45:14
will return, maybe not directly — who can even
45:16
sort that out at all?
45:17
He went to Egypt, to Mersa, supposedly to study something,
45:20
or maybe he fought in Syria — you can't tell.
45:23
All right, suppose we figured it out: they came back here, and we
45:25
locked them up for ten years. But we can't
45:27
just kill them. You can't have some checkpoint where
45:29
someone says, "Hello, where have you come from?" — "I
45:30
came from Syria" — and then pulls out a gun, bang,
45:32
shoots them in the head, "Next." Well,
45:35
that obviously cannot be how it works. Right, you can
45:37
try them for mercenarism and give them ten years each.
45:40
So we imprison those 3,000 people for ten years,
45:43
Dagestani Muslims who fought in
45:47
Syria. But then what? They are in prison,
45:49
and ten years later they get out — and they are hardly
45:51
likely to have become less embittered. And in any
45:53
case, prisons are a real
45:56
breeding ground for
45:58
the spread of extremist ideas. You have
46:01
probably read a lot lately
46:04
in the media about how there used to be
46:06
"red zones" in prisons,
46:07
where the administration kept strict order;
46:09
"black zones," where criminal underworld rules dominated;
46:11
and now there are appearing zones or units
46:13
that are "green," where everything is run according to Sharia.
46:16
So let's just lock all of them up now, and
46:18
there will be more "green" prison zones,
46:20
and those prisons will become suppliers
46:23
of extremists and terrorists who will
46:25
come back and do what they
46:27
wanted to do. In other words, these are pointless
46:28
measures. If we have extremism in Dagestan,
46:32
then let's fight
46:34
extremism in Dagestan. They talk as if
46:36
we are going to kill all the Dagestanis there, but
46:38
because in Syria we are fighting on
46:41
the side of the Shiites against the Sunnis, well then
46:43
even more of our Muslims — not only
46:46
from Dagestan and Chechnya, but soon, I would think, from
46:49
Tatarstan and elsewhere — will be going to
46:51
Syria. And one way or another, it is impossible to kill them all there,
46:54
as we have just seen for ourselves.
46:56
They will keep coming back here anyway.
46:58
strange, incomprehensible, inexplicable things that no one can make sense of
47:01
The only realistic
47:03
explanation is that Putin
47:06
has lost his mind. He has simply gone mad. As for those
47:08
matters of international politics, he is not interested in
47:10
what is happening here, and so he rushes around
47:12
in Syria, because competing there with
47:14
the Americans will lead to nothing good.
47:18
We already went through all of this in Afghanistan.
47:20
It is impossible to tell who there is
47:23
a mujahid and who is just an ordinary peasant, and if you
47:27
talk to anyone who served
47:28
in Dagestan, they will tell us the same thing:
47:30
by day he is a peasant, and by night a mujahid,
47:33
he digs up his rifle and goes off to shoot at someone.
47:34
And there is no way to solve this
47:38
problem except by killing the entire
47:40
population, and killing the entire population is also
47:42
impossible. Therefore our presence in
47:44
Syria is pointless. The losses we are
47:46
suffering, both material and especially
47:48
human, are meaningless. Why
47:50
are Russian citizens dying there? And it was no accident that
47:53
Putin stated, right before
47:56
the election, that he had once again
47:57
for the third time achieved victory and was withdrawing troops
48:00
from Syria, because the war in Syria is extremely
48:02
unpopular. No one understands why this
48:05
is happening. So where are our
48:07
representatives, the representatives of those people
48:09
who do not think that we should
48:11
be spending money on the war in Syria? Where are they in the State Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament)?
48:13
Where are they in the Federation Council (the upper house of parliament)? Where are they on
48:16
television? Where are the people who
48:19
raise their voices and say,
48:21
why fight there? Why the hell do we need
48:24
Syria and Palmyra?
48:25
when we need to rebuild
48:26
Russian cities. These people are not
48:28
represented. These people, in these
48:31
presidential elections, were thrown out —
48:33
me included. I stated that I was not
48:35
going to sponsor Syria while in
48:37
Russia there is such a large number of
48:39
problems.
48:40
All of these people were kicked out of the election, and
48:43
only those remained who say, essentially, go ahead,
48:45
come on, Aleppo, Palmyra is ours, and all the rest.
48:48
So it seems to me that what
48:51
is happening now is not even really about
48:54
the lies of the Ministry of Defense, and
48:55
the Ministry of Defense is obliged to lie.
48:57
As was written in various ancient Chinese
48:59
treatises, war is the way of deception.
49:01
The Ministry of Defense is supposed to lie; it is a
49:04
propaganda
49:06
organ. When it comes to combat
49:08
operations, it is one of the instruments of waging
49:11
war: to lie endlessly, understate its own
49:14
losses,
49:15
and exaggerate the enemy’s losses.
49:18
Yes, exactly, with that sort of expression, like there was
49:19
in that GIF just now. So this is not about
49:22
the Ministry of Defense lying. The Ministry of
49:23
Defense is an instrument of political
49:25
power, and Putin personally is obliged
49:28
to explain to all of us where the
49:30
lives of young and not-so-young people are being spent,
49:33
where tens and hundreds of billions
49:35
of rubles are going, and what all this is for. Because
49:38
the original goal — to kill Dagestanis
49:41
who went off somewhere to fight
49:44
around Aleppo — is clearly, in principle,
49:47
absurd-sounding, and it is
49:49
unachievable. And we have seen that three times
49:52
they reported that ISIS had been defeated,
49:54
and still 30 percent of our
49:57
aircraft
49:58
has been destroyed or damaged. I very much hope
50:01
that when the number of
50:03
victims reaches even two — and two
50:05
people is already a tragedy —
50:06
Who is depicted in your Twitter avatar?
50:09
In my Twitter avatar,
50:11
there are two wrestlers, one of whom
50:15
is gouging the other wrestler’s eyes out.
50:17
But I have had that avatar for a long time, historically speaking.
50:19
To be honest, it is long past time
50:20
to change it, but I have grown attached to it somehow. In which city
50:25
will you be during the
50:26
strike? asks Nikita Zatsepin.
50:28
Nikita Zatsepin, your question
50:31
shows a misunderstanding of the principle of the strike.
50:34
During the strike — right now I am in Moscow, and during
50:37
the strike tomorrow I may
50:39
be in another city. The strike is a
50:40
continuing process. Our strike does not
50:43
consist of simply not going to the polling station on election day
50:44
and then from our window
50:49
making obscene gestures or something else in
50:51
the direction of the Kremlin. The strike is ongoing, and it
50:54
consists in the fact that you, Nikita Zatsepin,
50:56
must persuade a couple of people,
50:59
talk to them, have a conversation, and
51:01
explain to them that they should not go to
51:03
the election.
51:03
With all your relatives, you should
51:05
print out a leaflet
51:06
and distribute it, and we will make a new leaflet,
51:09
a better one. You also should — just like
51:11
I am hugging this little dog — you should
51:13
hug and cherish your relatives
51:15
in order to explain to them that they must not
51:17
go to the election. It is absolutely not
51:19
decent and not good. I remind you that
51:22
today we are raising money for
51:26
Vолодя’s replacement — this is our
51:29
quadcopter. I can see that our meter is moving rather, rather weakly.
51:32
But, well, I was told that
51:34
Alexei was supposedly unhappy with
51:36
fundraising after New Year’s. After
51:38
New Year’s everyone is out of money, but yes,
51:41
maybe I was wrong. But we need a
51:44
gift — a copter. We will raise money for it on this
51:45
program, and on the next program
51:47
we will finish it off. In any case, the person who
51:49
makes the largest donation —
51:51
their name will become
51:53
Under the name of the quadcopter, We All White writes:
51:59
each one costs more than a billion rubles.
52:01
A Su-30, Su-35, or Su-34 aircraft, yes, that's how I
52:05
understand it from the figures on the official
52:08
state procurement website—that is, the price at
52:10
which the Ministry of Defense purchases
52:13
these aircraft from the manufacturers. It's insane.
52:16
As I said, this mortar
52:18
shelling of the defeated ISIS cost us
52:21
many, many billions of rubles,
52:24
and it's clear why. What else?
52:30
Why is Putin so concerned with Syria?
52:32
Maxim writes: "With complete disregard for the various
52:34
peoples of our country, they are driving the country into
52:36
poverty. Poor pensioners and war veterans
52:38
are selling vegetables in the markets. They should have taken better care of that.
52:40
Absolutely, you're right. And the main thing is
52:43
that no one can say this
52:45
not in elections, not on TV talk shows,
52:47
nowhere.
52:48
There should be a political space where
52:50
different people are present: some
52:52
are all for, "Come on, let's wage war in Syria," while others
52:55
should come out and say this obvious
52:57
thing that you wrote, Maxim. But no—
52:59
there are no such politicians, and they are pushed out of elections.
53:01
That is exactly why we must
53:04
make them reckon with us, because
53:06
in fact, the sensible majority in our country
53:08
the greater part of the population in our country
53:10
is on our side on this issue. So, are you for the ridiculous...
53:12
...this looks like a garbled line. Good
53:17
evening. Alexei, a little earlier you placed
53:19
the political regime of the Republic of Belarus and Iran in the same category.
53:22
As a resident of the former country, I'd be interested if you could explain, please,
53:24
writes Hiko from the Republic of Belarus.
53:26
Belarus—well, of course not, I can't
53:27
put them in the same category. That would be an oversimplification,
53:29
a stretch. Comparing the regimes of Iran and Belarus
53:33
—of course, they are essentially very different regimes.
53:36
Iran is, after all, a kind of
53:40
clerical autocracy.
53:44
Belarus is, of course, an authoritarian regime,
53:45
but of a completely different character. What I meant was
53:48
that Russia is moving somewhere in between
53:51
these two directions. On the one hand,
53:53
even our official state officials like
53:55
to throw around phrases like
53:57
"Orthodox Iran," and we see that more and more
53:59
judging by the State Duma (the lower house of Russia's parliament),
54:01
it is turning into some kind of...
54:03
people there are spouting all sorts of nonsense about
54:06
Orthodoxy—just complete nonsense, utterly insane.
54:08
On the other hand, Putin's regime
54:12
quite plainly borrows directly from Belarus
54:16
all these inventions—from laws on foreign
54:18
agents to fines for rallies, to increased
54:21
arrests for rallies. That is, Putin, in
54:23
principle, doesn't invent his own idiotic
54:25
laws—he takes them from Belarus.
54:27
That is, of course, very, very noticeable, haha.
54:32
Alexei, what are your thoughts,
54:33
regarding the creation of an independent
54:35
nationwide media outlet based on YouTube,
54:37
built solely on reports by local
54:38
journalists?
54:39
Creating such a channel to cover
54:41
the real situation would be better than campaigning for you.
54:43
That would be a great idea, but it's fairly
54:45
difficult to implement. You probably remember
54:48
the contest I ran—a contest for video
54:50
bloggers from the regions. All of that was
54:52
quite difficult. The main thing is that it
54:55
requires fairly substantial resources,
54:56
significant expenses. Even if we had
55:00
the same kind of guerrilla television as
55:01
Navalny Live, it would still involve
55:03
certain costs, and a regional network
55:05
would cost even more. People may still
55:08
work on enthusiasm for a month or two, but then
55:10
you need to cover at least some expenses,
55:12
if not salaries. That's fairly difficult.
55:14
Managing it is difficult too, most importantly. But
55:16
we are trying to do it, though we're not very
55:18
good at it—we're not really
55:21
I'm in a rather strange situation,
55:24
because even when I'm working on developing
55:27
Navalny Live, I never thought that in
55:29
my life I would be doing something
55:31
like this. And that brings me back to an important
55:34
topic for me that I wanted to discuss with you.
55:36
Please write to me and tell me what
55:38
you would like to see here,
55:41
what you think should be done.
55:44
What should Navalny Live be developing right now?
55:47
What would make you watch it?
55:50
What needs to be improved? What needs
55:52
to be shut down?
55:53
What needs to be changed? What new things should we make?
55:55
Some kind of program? One of the ideas we have
55:57
that I think we could implement quickly is
56:00
some kind of show—
56:01
I don't know what to call it—a program about the rights
56:03
of women, for women, and about women. That is,
56:06
we want to give feminists
56:07
of all kinds a voice. You know that even
56:09
within the feminist
56:11
community there are huge, ongoing
56:13
debates: are you real
56:15
feminists or not real feminists?
56:17
And we have a lot of airtime, and we
56:20
want to launch a program like that,
56:22
to give them all a platform so that they can
56:26
discuss what matters to them, and we would listen,
56:28
criticize, agree—it would be
56:31
simple to do, or at least possible
56:33
to do. I really don't know how
56:34
popular it would be, but the more developed a
56:38
country is, the more these issues are discussed there.
56:40
So in Russia, they need to be discussed too.
56:42
Alexei, how do you feel
56:47
about the fact that police officers cannot
56:48
travel abroad? Simka asks.
56:50
It's idiocy. My acquaintances in the police
56:53
and the FSB (Russia's Federal Security Service), and military personnel too,
56:56
all have this problem. It's simply stupidity, because
56:58
as someone who didn't have an international passport for many
57:00
years, I can say for certain:
57:02
that vacationing in Russia is much more expensive than
57:05
abroad, and so when we
57:07
don’t allow police officers to go abroad, we
57:09
are telling them: you pay more
57:10
money for your family’s vacation. This is complete
57:12
nonsense, and ordinary police officers carry no such state
57:15
secrets, of course.
57:17
There’s no reason to take away his foreign
57:19
passport and not let him leave the country. As for
57:22
Navalny Live—well, getting back to
57:24
write to me, I don’t see people writing to me
57:26
with the hashtag #Navalny2018. You wrote about
57:30
something connected with our
57:34
channel, I can see that. Complain to Alaska, well—
57:36
by the way, there are quite a lot of fans in paradise
57:39
of the healthcare system about Navalny.
57:42
Lev, here’s a suggestion, writes Pasha Kuzhel
57:44
chik: as the first prize in a contest,
57:46
give the winner Volodya, and that
57:48
would encourage more people. But we ourselves can’t
57:49
give away Volodya—after all, it’s quite expensive.
57:51
We want to send it into retirement, but I mean
57:55
we’re not going to give Volodya a quiet retirement.
57:57
No way—he has to keep working.
57:59
Someone will be flying a new copter under
58:02
some new name, and we’ll use Volodya too
58:04
for our work.
58:07
That’s too much of a luxury. After all, we’re
58:09
an organization that exists on donations; it’s not
58:11
a luxury we can afford just to
58:12
hand it out left and right
58:17
or give it to someone as a gift. Alexei, what turnout percentage
58:19
in the 2018 election would be shameful
58:22
for the authorities? asks Konstantin Dashyev.
58:23
Konstantin, it doesn’t matter—there is no
58:27
specific threshold. For them, 51 percent is
58:29
fine; 49 percent is shameful, yes, terrible.
58:31
Or 30 percent is shameful and terrible. That’s not
58:34
what we should be thinking about. The math doesn’t
58:36
matter; what matters is the political question.
58:39
Don’t go, and persuade everyone else not to go.
58:41
Illegitimacy is a feeling people have; there
58:45
may be quite high turnout, and yet everyone will
58:47
understand perfectly well what it is,
58:49
what these elections are. Let me remind you that we’re
58:51
raising money today for a quadcopter. Everything
58:53
you send will be
59:00
directed to the investigations department fund for
59:01
the purchase of a quadcopter and equipment
59:03
for it. All of this costs 410,000 rubles (about 4,100 USD).
59:05
We’d like to have something humorous on
59:07
the Navalny Live channel, writes Vata
59:10
1990. Yes, we really do want something
59:13
funny, but there’s one problem:
59:15
you need people who actually know how to make jokes.
59:17
I mean, you can’t just—I can’t just take
59:20
any random person, sit them down here,
59:21
and say, “Be funny.”
59:22
If it worked that way, I’d
59:25
make great jokes myself, but
59:27
basically, for me it works only with
59:29
mixed success. But yes, we’re trying
59:31
to come up with some kind of program like that.
59:32
It’ll probably just be hard to do it entirely
59:34
live. We need debates,
59:36
journalistic investigations, writes
59:38
Alex Krivonosov to Alexei.
59:39
But again, you understand, guys, this
59:42
is connected with a specific
59:45
kind of separate substantive work.
59:47
It’s not a matter of us simply providing
59:49
someone with airtime. The issue is that
59:51
first we have to organize de
59:53
bates and new journalistic
59:54
investigations,
59:55
and then also put them on air. In other words,
59:57
we would have to create an entire
59:58
new thing like that. And what if
1:00:01
we turned Navalny Live into a platform
1:00:03
for science communication? Useful and
1:00:05
interesting, writes Nadezhda Baranova. That’s an excellent
1:00:07
idea, a very good idea. Write to us about
1:00:10
who could appear here
1:00:13
to popularize science—yes, that’s the right
1:00:16
word, the right word—and at the same time maybe
1:00:18
fight some of the obscurantism
1:00:20
that’s overtaking our country. That’s
1:00:22
a very good idea—I’m writing it down right now.
1:00:26
There’s so much trash in Russia every day
1:00:28
that it’s enough to make a news bulletin of
1:00:29
ten to fifteen minutes.
1:00:30
That overlaps with Kamikadze, but not everyone
1:00:32
watches him. A lot of people do watch Kamikadze,
1:00:35
but we would make it
1:00:38
Honestly, I’ll even reveal our
1:00:41
plan: we’re thinking about making
1:00:43
some kind of news show. I mean, not
1:00:45
necessarily about trash—just normal,
1:00:47
honest,
1:00:47
human news. It’s quite a complicated
1:00:50
process, but we’re trying
1:00:53
to move toward it somehow. And great,
1:00:56
even if we overlap completely, I don’t
1:00:58
think we can steal an audience
1:01:01
from Kamikadze, or that he can steal
1:01:04
ours, or that this Navalny Live channel
1:01:06
takes viewers away from my main
1:01:07
channel. I think the more content
1:01:09
appears on YouTube, the more people
1:01:11
come in overall, and that’s better. 68 new
1:01:15
questions—but I’ve already gone two minutes over.
1:01:17
Also, don’t ask about PUBG—
1:01:20
whether I’ll play it. I probably won’t,
1:01:22
but I need to find the time.
1:01:24
A charity broadcast so that we could
1:01:25
collect donations and help someone—
1:01:27
we need all the donations ourselves right now. Here
1:01:30
we’re raising money because we need to maintain this
1:01:33
TV channel, we need to buy copters,
1:01:35
we need to finance our strike,
1:01:37
so of course we’re ready to organize
1:01:39
charity projects. In fact,
1:01:41
we don’t mind giving airtime here.
1:01:43
We raised money here for Mediazona, and I actively
1:01:45
supported, and still support, fundraising, but
1:01:47
to regularly invite various
1:01:50
charitable organizations so that
1:01:52
they can collect donations through us—I don’t
1:01:53
I think that’s the right thing to do, and sorry
1:01:55
for this slight bit of selfishness, but a show about
1:01:59
technology and games is a great idea, a very
1:02:02
good one. A show about movies—actually, I
1:02:04
would really love a show about movies.
1:02:06
We need someone who can talk about it
1:02:07
in an interesting way. Besides, there may
1:02:09
possibly be problems here with copyright.
1:02:11
I don’t understand how BadComedian (a popular Russian film reviewer on YouTube) deals with this problem.
1:02:13
He literally shows
1:02:15
chunks of movies, and he doesn’t get banned.
1:02:16
We need to look into this issue. Maybe
1:02:18
it would be a good idea. So, I see you’ve sent me
1:02:21
a lot of interesting suggestions about
1:02:25
[music]
1:02:26
Navalny LIVE and what we can do here.
1:02:28
We’ll have—I’ll write all of this down
1:02:30
carefully. Thank you very much, and
1:02:33
the guys who run the channel—we
1:02:37
are going to work even more actively this year.
1:02:39
We’ll brainstorm and try
1:02:41
to understand which of these things we’re ready
1:02:44
to implement in the near future. And please,
1:02:46
we need your feedback. You see, we don’t really understand everything ourselves.
1:02:49
We’re not—like in that old joke, on average,
1:02:52
“I’m not a real plumber”—we’re not real
1:02:55
TV hosts or TV channel executives.
1:02:57
And without your feedback, your advice, your
1:03:01
opinions about what should be done here or
1:03:03
shouldn’t be done, we won’t be able to do it
1:03:05
on our own. Right now, we’re doing some things based on
1:03:07
instinct.
1:03:07
But you—you are the power here. All this
1:03:10
television is made to entertain you
1:03:12
and to bring new people here.
1:03:14
We’ll be doing this in 2018,
1:03:17
and we’ll be doing it in order to
1:03:20
make the authorities reckon with us, and
1:03:23
everyone can make a major contribution.
1:03:25
In the description of this video, find the link to
1:03:29
the group for the January 28 rally in your city.
1:03:32
Be sure to join it, and bring
1:03:35
as many more people as possible into this group. We’ve
1:03:36
raised 158,000
1:03:38
rubles (about 158,000 RUB). Thank you very much. As of now, on May 1,
1:03:41
someone made a joke—currently in first place
1:03:44
right now, I’m being told,
1:03:47
it’s 18,200 rubles, and the user named
1:03:50
Trump. So yes, that really is
1:03:53
funny—I have to give credit to your sense of
1:03:55
humor.
1:03:55
If by the next broadcast, where I hope
1:03:58
we’ll make it to 410,000 rubles, nobody
1:04:03
outbids Trump, then the new quadcopter
1:04:06
the super quadcopter of the Anti-Corruption Foundation
1:04:08
will be called Trump. However you decide, that’s how it will be. Thank you very much.
1:04:10
See you
1:04:12
next Thursday.
1:04:16
[music]