Why Nothing Good Will Happen: The Example of Zenit Arena

Hi, this is Navalny, and I have

a magical 328

rubles, which can explain things better than any politician,

economist, or political scientist

why Putin's system of power doesn't

work, never will work, and

is geared solely toward endless

theft. Look, last Saturday

the first match was held at Zenit

Arena. It is the most expensive stadium in the world,

and it cost us 48 billion rubles. In fact,

officials say it was about 43 billion, and that

no one knows its exact price. But we

did something very simple. We simply

added up all the state contracts and got that

same figure: a little over 48 billion

rubles. And that is the absolute minimum of what

Zenit Arena actually cost. So

if you divide that amount by

the number of Russian citizens,

it turns out that each of us, including

the very elderly and small children,

paid exactly the same

328 rubles for this stadium. And we were basically told

not to begrudge the money, because this is

a matter of Russia's prestige and pride. We

were supposed to get

a dream stadium,

the best in the world, in perfect condition. And

Putin personally oversaw this project,

held meetings on it, and reported to

FIFA. Without the slightest hesitation, he allocated

as much money as they asked for.

Let's remember: in 2007, when they had only just

started building this stadium, its

cost was estimated at 6.7 billion rubles.

Then in 2009 it was already 23.7 billion rubles.

In the end, we poured 48 billion into it. And what did we

get for that? A week before the opening, Zenit's head

coach Mircea Lucescu said that

the pitch wasn't even fit for training.

Then Zenit's general director

said that the mechanism there wasn't functioning

that allows the pitch

to slide out and back in after a match. And

it wouldn't work until

the end of the World Cup in

2018. And that retractable pitch,

by the way, was the main point of pride of

Zenit Arena. There are only five such stadiums in the world,

and we wanted to have one of

them, right? According to Zenit's director,

to properly host football

matches, the stadium would need another

5.5 billion rubles invested in it. That means the price would rise

to at least 53.5

billion rubles. Next, during the match itself,

everyone was surprised to discover that in the

area under the stands, the roof was leaking and

stadium workers had to run around with

buckets to collect the water.

Exactly the way

owners of very old dachas (country cottages) do. But

this wasn't a dacha—it was a 48-billion-ruble stadium.

Then it turned out that the retractable

roof over the stadium was also broken and also

leaking. So at the first match, in the

most expensive stadium in the world, we all

watched in horror as some

guys with sheets of plastic

climbed around on the roof and covered holes

so that water wouldn't pour onto the pitch and

the players. The turf situation was

something else entirely. Pieces of it started

coming loose even during the warm-up, so

the players and coaches were using their feet

to stomp down those sticking-up pieces of

grass, but it still didn't help. And we

watched chunks of turf fly out

from under the footballers' feet right during

the match. Photos of the areas of the pitch near

the corner flag instantly became

an internet sensation, because there

turned out to be patches of artificial

grass there. A 48-billion-ruble stadium. Let's

be honest and say that we all

understand perfectly well why the

most expensive stadium in the world turned out so

bad. Yes, because of those 48 billion, no less

than 33 billion were simply stolen. Brazenly

stolen in front of the whole country. It's just that

we at the Anti-Corruption Foundation

filed a whole pile of complaints about the utterly

non-transparent and highly corrupt

ways construction contracts were being handed out,

and what happened? Nothing

happened. Why am I saying all this? Because this is,

as I already said, Putin's personal

project. It was carried out by his closest

friends and associates from St. Petersburg. The governor

was constantly at the construction site. The media

covered the progress nonstop. This was one

of the most important construction projects

in the Russian Federation. And even so, the money

was stolen, and the roof had to be covered with

plastic sheeting. So think about it yourselves. If

this is an example of the kind of result,

the very best result that

Putin's government can produce when it throws all

its efforts into something, can we really expect from it

anything in genuinely complex

projects? This is just a stadium, after all,

not the Large Hadron Collider.

Stadiums are built successfully all over the world.

There is nothing especially

super-complicated about it. And the failure of this stadium

eloquently shows us that,

of course, under this government Russia will never

develop world-class IT,

nanotechnology, biotechnology, or, I don't

know, high-speed trains, an advanced

aircraft industry, and so on. In other words, there will

be none of those achievements of

modern civilization that

the developed world enjoys today. There won't be

that in Russia, most likely. Of course, we

may be able to buy some things, but

we will never produce them ourselves. And what

production, if they skimmed money from each of

us—328 rubles—and simply stole

most of that money. And they've been doing this

for 17 years already. That is, essentially, their

only qualification: to steal and

destroy.

Here's an experiment. Try right

now to name, just for yourself, three

major cutting-edge industrial projects that

have been launched in Russia in recent years and

that we can be proud of on the

international stage. That will be

no easy exercise. Everything that just

came to mind and that you want

to mention—like space exploration—but that

was inherited from the USSR (the Soviet Union), and during

the Putin years, there has been nothing. Well, except for

officials' palaces—we can

boast about those; ours really are

the biggest. So this government

must be fought not only because

it steals everything, but also because

it cannot do anything properly. It has

clumsy hands. As long as

these people remain in the Kremlin, there is no prospect

for Russia's development, unfortunately. And

this situation has to change. Subscribe

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