Absolute patriots from Britain, how to "take down" United Russia, and the Kerch incident

[music]

Hi. It's 8:00 p.m. in Moscow, which means

that here in the Navalny Live studio, it's time for the program *Russia*

*of the Future*, and I'm Alexei Navalny, or

a star rolling toward his political sunset,

as I was called this week.

By the TV channel Life News. Honestly, I

thought it no longer existed, that it had been

shut down, but apparently it still exists and even

comes up with such funny, uh,

headlines for my program, for which

many thanks to them. A lot of questions

are coming in. I'll try now to answer

them, on various topics. A reminder:

write to me on Twitter with the hashtag Russia

of the Future, and I'll try to take

those questions. Well, I've also pulled some from

the comments.

Well, that is, I'll try to answer

as much as I can. A lot of topics, a lot has

happened, but

I still want to start with the topic

that hardly anyone asked me about.

Sorry, everyone's covering it. Mars. Mars is

cool. And we—well, never mind whether it's Americans or not,

yes, the Americans sent

a spacecraft to Mars. Just imagine,

how damn far away

Mars is. And they sent a rocket

that flew there and somehow managed to land

this thing, and it will operate there for 720

days. That's fantastic. Let's be happy for

humanity. Of course, there is a certain disappointment for

us too, because our country used to be

the pioneer,

including when it came to

landing craft, and now all we have is Rogozin,

who drowns

a dachshund. I even asked them not to show that picture

of Rogozin drowning a dachshund. So that's

what Russian space exploration looks like. Earlier today

there was Vladimir Milov's program. Before me,

he did one about space. It's all very

sad there, but very interesting. Please watch

it.

So,

I, Sergei Brilyov, solemnly, sincerely,

and honestly swear by Almighty God that

upon becoming a British citizen I

will be faithful and bear true

allegiance to Her Majesty Queen

Elizabeth II, her heirs and

successors. According to law, I will maintain

loyalty to the United Kingdom and

respect its rights and freedoms. I

will uphold its democratic values. I

will faithfully observe its laws and

fulfill my duties and

obligations

as a British citizen. I don't know

whether Sergei Brilyov said this with his

hand on his heart. I don't know whether he was kneeling

on one knee. I don't know whether maybe they put,

as they do in England, some kind of

sword on one shoulder and then the other. Or whether he

had to kiss an official's feet

or something else, or whether he had to

demonstratively, as part of the ritual,

spit on his Russian passport. But he

did say it. He said it as an adult,

you understand? All of us became

citizens of Russia. Well, simply

because that's where we ended up. I was

a citizen of the Soviet Union, and like me

Brilyov later became a citizen of Russia.

I didn't take any special oath. And he

didn't either, though maybe when he

joined the Komsomol (the Soviet Communist youth organization), he said some kind of

oath. I said an oath too

when I became a Young Pioneer and an Octobrist (Soviet children's youth groups)

in the Soviet Union. But when you're just

a Russian citizen, you don't

publicly swear anything. But Brilyov,

as a mature adult, being, well,

someone who already works for

the state, who has a family, a wife, and he

said these words in complete seriousness.

I swear, I swear by Almighty God that

I will remain loyal to Britain

obligations. A British citizen,

blah blah. And now all of us, well, ever since

the last broadcast, this crook has

admitted it—we cornered him, he simply had

nowhere to retreat. Yes, he admitted

that he is a British citizen, he

admitted that we correctly found his

London property, but it's just amazing how

fiercely they defend him. Of course, the absolute

pinnacle of hypocrisy here is Dmitry Peskov. When

he was asked about it on Ekho Moskvy (Echo of Moscow, a radio station),

he said: "So what's the big deal? What's

wrong with that?" And Sergei Brilyov, well, for many

years now

we've known him as

an absolute patriot,

you understand?

Okay, I see something on our screen is upside down.

I hope that disappears now.

And we've known him as an absolute

patriot.

Seriously, sorry, I just switched

into Sergei

Brilyov's language—an absolute patriot. Well,

fine, even if you know him as

what you consider—well, of course, by

Peskov's standards—he's a patriot. We have an

inside joke here that Peskov's family could make up a small

NATO bloc.

One of his children is in one NATO country,

a citizen there; another child is in

another NATO country; a third in a third one,

and his wife is in yet another NATO country. It's

just this little

international battalion. But maybe

to Peskov that looks like

patriotism. But to also call this

man an absolute patriot,

a man who swore by Almighty

to God that he would remain loyal in

another country.

Well, of course. The height of hypocrisy, just

the absolute height of it. I’m telling you this as someone

who, every single time I

go abroad, whether for work or

for vacation or for anything else, there at the

airport I’m followed around by a whole battalion of these

little weirdos. Some with cameras, some

with phones. There’s always, without fail,

some guy sitting there, some kind of

FSB man (from Russia’s security service), who’s got his

phone pointed right at the boarding gate,

filming me while pretending

that he’s just sitting there, thinking about

the birds. It’s always incredibly obvious, it’s

very funny. They immediately post this

“secret footage” to some

Telegram channels and write: “Navalny has

left the country.” An interesting,

interesting move for a politician

claiming to be a leader of the opposition.

Somehow that doesn’t seem very patriotic. He’s probably

gone to see his masters. There you have it.

And yet all of them, you understand, swear by

Almighty God—they’re such believers, after all.

Honestly, how has lightning not

struck them, excuse my language, and burned them

to ashes for words like that? They

swear by Almighty God, they are citizens

of other states, and yet they’re absolute

patriots. And for Putin,

that’s normal, for this whole system

it’s normal. What’s interesting is that I still,

quite often, despite, well,

despite my extensive experience of

dealing with the authorities’ hypocrisy, I still often

think that somehow they’ll

react. Like, all right, we found some

property abroad. Well,

if we found out that he’s a British

citizen, that he swore an oath,

surely now they’ll at least gently

push him out. No, no, no—they’ll keep

him. He’ll stay right where he is, and everything

will remain exactly as it is. And then they’ll

pretend: “Well

uh, what’s the big deal? What’s the big deal?” Well

after all, we here in the Kremlin have never

never held anything against people

because they had ties abroad.

Never, not at all, we’ve

never done anything even remotely

like that.” And this is being said by the very people who,

since Brilev is a journalist, shook up

the entire media market like this.

Take the whole situation with *The New Times* magazine.

Why? Because there was some kind of

foreign money involved. It was labeled a

foreign agent. It was fined

22 million rubles (about hundreds of thousands of U.S. dollars). They’re trying to destroy

the magazine because some money

came in from abroad.

And these are Russian citizens. They’re

publishing a magazine—a truthful magazine—about

the Russian agenda, but they have to be

crushed. Amazing. Foreign

agents,

the newspaper *Vedomosti* and Demyan Kudryavtsev,

whom I’m no fan of. I’ve criticized him many times,

I don’t like him,

and I absolutely don’t like what they did

to *Vedomosti*. But, excuse me,

it is an absolute injustice

what is happening to them. Their

founding owners included *The Wall Street Journal* and the *Financial Times*.

They were forced to sell *Vedomosti*.

And that poor

Kudryavtsev is being pushed out of the country too,

because he has an Israeli passport.

But he isn’t even an official, he’s just

some guy, really. He’s involved in

some business, just going about his

own affairs, whether good or bad,

but he’s not living off state budget money. Even so,

they’re pressured from all sides, they’re

tormented—foreign agents, spies,

enemies. The European University at

St. Petersburg—they pressured it because

it had many foreign

professors. Foreign professors are,

of course, agents of influence; through them

harmful ideas are being planted.

Crush them, destroy them, grind them down,

trample them. Yes, all these propagandists,

yes, I posted this on

Twitter and, well, I’ll just show it here again

—I posted it on my blog too. Remember

the story with Rustem

Adagamov, back in the days

when there was the Coordination Council, and they

were opening criminal cases against all the members

of the Coordination Council left and right—well,

Adagamov had Norwegian citizenship, and

good Lord, how much he suffered for that.

And he got it in some perfectly natural

way. He had been going there for many years,

some relatives live there. I don’t

know the exact details. But there he was,

uh,

a citizen of Norway and at the same time

a citizen of Russia. And that was presented as

“look, the opposition has dual citizenship.”

“Just look at them, these opposition figures, they’re so

awful. See, Vladimir Solovyov (a pro-Kremlin TV host)

is corresponding with this other nasty

little guy. It’s just funny how the opposition

loves dual citizenship.”

And now these same people—let’s look at

what this Gorgadze is writing now.

Opening their little eyes wide in astonishment,

spreading their little hands, they look at us and

say: “My God, why are you

picking on Sergei Brilev? It’s only…”

Tell me, comrades, gentlemen

liberals and sympathizers, what exactly

is the problem?

What is it, exactly, that we’re supposedly not understanding, and what is all the fuss about?

A fuss? Well, it’s only that there’s some kind of

British citizenship held by the deputy head of VGTRK (Russia’s state broadcasting company). And

we just don’t understand what all the fuss is about. Well,

what brazen swine and hypocrites they are. This is

just some final stage of it all. But I

one thing that makes me— actually, two things, I’d even

say there are two things that drive me

into a rage, right?

Well, England—Britain now—it

aside from Ukraine, is practically

officially considered the most hostile

country toward Russia. Look at what

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova says. Constantly,

she denounces those awful English. Dmitry

Kiselyov tears into them.

The Foreign Ministry is bursting with the most terrible,

curses directed at Britain,

which is supposedly staging some kind of,

endless provocations against Russia.

I mean, it’s practically, no more and no less than,

a potential enemy, or a country of

a probable adversary, as they used to say in the

USSR (Soviet Union). Right now, ask anyone on the

street which countries are the most hostile

to Russia. And a person who

watches television will say: "Well,

Ukraine, of course, and in second place

Britain, and in third place the United States."

And Brilyov sits on the public council

of the Ministry of Defense, despite the fact

that this is explicitly forbidden. And yet these are

the same people who constantly preach patriotism and

passed a special law. Well, in order

to make sure that some of those, what do you call them,

liberals or opposition types, wouldn’t accidentally

slip in there. As I understand it,

this was adopted because Lyudmila Alexeyeva,

the well-known human rights activist, had

American citizenship. And there were also quite a few

people among human rights activists who

had been expelled abroad back in Soviet times

and obtained citizenship

in some other country. And now they

have dual citizenship. And so that such

people wouldn’t get in, they passed a special

law stating that members of

public chambers cannot be

citizens of foreign states or

persons holding dual citizenship.

And Brilyov sits there. At the Ministry of Defense.

Well, maybe members of the public council

of the Ministry of Defense don’t have access to

state secrets, some kind of military

secret or anything like that, but still—

it’s the Ministry of Defense. You’re entering

places there, you’re,

well, at the very least you’re definitely sitting in

the minister’s office. You can get into

certain facilities. I spent my whole life living in

a closed military town. My parents live in

a military town—Krasnoznamensk. And

to get in there, I have to

go to the checkpoint every time, hand over my

passport, and they issue me a pass. And,

despite the fact that my parents

live there, there’s a notice posted there this

big saying that in order to get

onto the territory of our town, you need

some kind of letter signed personally by the

Minister of Defense. I remember that because

I was stunned. Maybe, of course, they’ve

changed the procedure by now, but I

was also amazed and thought, my God, how do

all those Tajik

workers, Uzbek workers get in here, because

it says there that a foreigner can

enter only with permission personally from the Minister

of Defense.

So it turns out that Brilyov, with his—I’ll never

get tired of repeating this—sincere and honest

oath before Almighty God of loyalty,

true allegiance to Her Majesty

the Queen, goes wandering everywhere.

He goes everywhere. He goes where we

Russian citizens are forbidden to enter,

because he is

a member of the Defense Ministry’s public council, and

before that he was a member of the public

council of the Interior Ministry.

The irony is that Brilyov,

if he is a citizen of a foreign

state, is required to notify the

relevant authority, and he is supposed to

notify the Interior Ministry. I mean, now directly

the Interior Ministry, and back then the Federal

Migration Service, the FMS, which

reported to the Interior Ministry and was part of its structure.

So he writes to the Interior Ministry. Well, I think he

didn’t write anything, of course—he’s lying about absolutely everything—but

in theory, what would that

look like? He writes to the Interior Ministry: Hello,

guys, I’m a citizen of the United Kingdom,

I swore true allegiance. The Interior Ministry

says, "All right." And a couple of years later

it appoints him to a public council where

he is barred from serving as a citizen of

Britain. Well, that means only one thing:

Brilyov, of course, never notified any

authorities. That carries criminal

liability under that same rather

idiotic and useless law that

the Kremlin passed to torment ordinary

citizens. We have loads of people who

simultaneously hold citizenship of Ukraine

and Russia, Belarus and Russia,

Turkmenistan and Russia. Good Lord, the Soviet

Union was just some endless

jumble of people with careers and fates

who lived in different countries and now

don’t even know whose citizens they are:

Moldova’s, Russia’s, Ukraine’s, Uzbekistan’s.

Russians lived everywhere. So they come here,

the poor things suffer because they can’t

get a Russian passport. Then they

do get a Russian passport, but they

still have some old

Uzbek one they used to have. They lived in

Tashkent. And the lives of these people are very

is made more complicated by all this nonsense and garbage,

because there are a ton of restrictions. You're

basically a foreigner, basically treated like an enemy,

you have to report things about yourself.

So an ordinary person gets pushed around, while this

British citizen

serves at VGTRK (the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company) as deputy director

general. Well, of course,

this certainly tells us something, on the one hand, about

these procedures of

secrecy, yes, the procedures for checking

someone's background, and in general about what

is going on there—well, what's going on there is simply

a complete mess. We found out that,

uh, Brilev is a foreign citizen, and

the Defense Ministry's counterintelligence, which

is directly supposed to determine whether

a foreign citizen is wandering around the General Staff building or going into

Shoigu's office past completely

top-secret things—whether a foreign

citizen is doing that. They didn't find that out. But on the

other hand, again, it's total

hypocrisy. Of course, they all have

dual citizenship.

Either their children have dual citizenship, or they

dream of having dual citizenship themselves.

Probably not all of them have something as

prestigious as British citizenship. More like some

passport from Saint Kitts and Nevis

or whatever it's called, or from some

Bahamas island or other. They've all got them

hidden under the pillow somewhere, so that if anything happens

they can get on a plane. Goodbye. Goodbye,

Russia. Goodbye, Russians.

I'm leaving and taking a couple of billion with me, while

you sit there like fools in your snow,

poor, with the retirement age raised,

while I'm here smoking a cigar on the

Bahamas. They're all like that. This is

a disgusting,

lying regime, absolutely colonial in its

essence. That's what it is. Why did Brilev

admit everything? Not because he somehow felt he had

to answer to us. The one thing that really makes him

uncomfortable is this: if he were to

deny it and publicly say, "Navalny

is lying, and I don't have any citizenship,

any nationality, as all those propagandists first started writing,

he could have

done that. And what could we have

set against it? No UK Home Office

is ever going to give me

a certificate saying that Brilev is a foreign

citizen. Unless—until—we caught

him literally holding his passport open like this,

there was no other proof. Well,

he is in the database. That's substantial

evidence. He could have said it was all

lies, the way they've said many times before. Yes,

lies. There's no dacha, no nothing. Just some papers.

He could have said that. But he has

neighbors, he has a border officer,

he has some respectable British

society he socializes with.

He probably has a school,

a privileged one, that his

child attends, and later there'll probably be a university. And,

well, they sit among these people. And

patriotism in Britain is, well,

an important thing. Everyone knows that

you swore allegiance to the Queen. So

the next time he was sitting there,

I don't know, with the parents of his daughter's classmates,

someone might ask him:

"Sergei, maybe we've

misunderstood something, but we

read in *The Times*

that you renounced it and said you don't have

our citizenship. So you must have turned in

your passport, right? Because we're, we're, we're

proper, stiff British people who

drink tea. Not from just any cup, but from

some properly British one. We

simply cannot imagine a situation where you

first swore allegiance to our Queen,

and then suddenly said, 'Nothing of the sort

ever happened.'"

And Brilev is very uncomfortable in this

situation in front of them. As for us, he

doesn't care, because this is a colonial

administration. To them, we're natives.

Running around naked with drums and with these

things around our necks and those things,

you know, the ones under the lip, like in pictures in

*National Geographic*. These funny little

people running around,

people with spears, and there's oil

in the ground there. Then wonderful

planters and colonizers like Sergei

Brilev arrive. They smoke cigarettes through some

fancy gadget, pump out the oil, and

go back home. And after working a little

in these awful, awful conditions in

Russia, they then tell each other

amusing stories about the funny

habits of the natives—how they do all sorts of

ridiculous things, what drunkards they are, how

they're just not like us. They're not

civilized, they're dirty, they don't even have

manicures. Not at all. So I'm just so

glad to be back with our own kind again,

gentlemen, to have some tea or a bit of whisky

or whatever else. And this, of course,

is an important thing. I want as many

people as possible to understand that Putin

has established a colonial

administration here. That is, he—well, he—

of course doesn't run around reporting

to someone else; he isn't

a governor-general who

answers to somebody above him. But he himself is

more like a kind of foreign monarch who

rules here over these, uh,

colonizers.

But of course they all want to leave. They

want to live some good, decent

life over there, not here.

The last thing I want to say is,

And on this subject, there’s something that, well,

is already basically criminal, right, and we

are demanding that VGTRK (Russia’s state broadcasting company) now be

declared a foreign agent. After all, there

is a person there who exerts

significant influence over editorial

policy. There is. We want Sergei

Brilyov not to explain on Facebook where

people like us belong, but instead to go to his own

audience directly and say:

"Guys, you know, it turns out that

there’s this thing. Well, not exactly that it turned out—I thought

you all already knew, but I’m actually

a British citizen, uh, well, that doesn’t

affect anything. I’m going to keep

doing my program and keep

telling you how great life is

in Russia. Don’t pay attention to the fact

that I’m a British citizen." Of course, he

won’t do that. And neither he

nor VGTRK will be declared

a foreign agent. But this whole foreign-agent

issue—just look at it

in this context, how monstrously

it looks. Remember there was a foundation called

Dynasty.

Russian businessman Dmitry Zimin

founded the company Beeline, which everyone knows.

He built it from scratch and made

a substantial amount of money from it, and then

he spent that money supporting scientists,

funding various books—in other words,

he was simply doing something wonderful,

something truly admirable.

He was declared a foreign agent because,

well, after selling Beeline,

his money was sitting in some

foreign bank. And then he transferred that money

from the foreign bank here to

Russia and gave it to Russian scientists. So

a Russian citizen, a Russian

man, was giving other Russian people his own

Russian money. He was declared a foreign

agent. The foundation was shut down, and now he

can no longer give money. Those scientists

were left without funding.

An even more extreme and simply

outrageous case: maybe you heard about when

they got onto this whole thing of fighting

NGOs labeled as foreign agents—they shut down

an NGO in Saratov that helped people

with diabetes. And, uh, well, in Russia who

is it that gives money—what wealthy people donate

to fight diabetes? Uh, they were getting

money from foreigners. But they were asking

some foreign foundations, writing:

"Hello, we’re from Saratov, people here

are dying from diabetes. Please give us

$20,000 so that we can

buy them insulin and provide syringes."

And the foreigners would say: "All right, we’ll give

you $20,000 because, well,

your rich people—Abramovich and

Usmanov—they mostly invest in yachts.

Fine, we’ll give it to you so that

someone in Saratov can be treated." They

were shut down. They were declared foreign

agents and shut down. And then a young woman died

in Saratov afterward because she did not

receive

her medication in time. She did not receive

treatment in time. For several months she

was trying to get the medication she was legally entitled to—

insulin or whatever else she needed—

because she was entitled to it by law.

She didn’t get it, and she died because

those bastards declared the foundation a foreign

agent and shut it down.

And Brilyov, you understand, was at the head of this

disgusting

structure that destroyed this young woman,

drove her to her death—there sat Sergei

Brilyov and Dmitry Peskov, all of whom are

completely entangled with foreign countries

up to their ears. And yet they say: "Well, if

someone sent money to Saratov and they bought

insulin with foreign money—foreign agents,

let them die, so long as nothing like that happens."

But

the next phrase that came into my

head was something like: these people should be executed.

I am fundamentally opposed to the death

penalty, so I will not say: "These

people should be executed," but they really do need

to all be imprisoned. They need to be imprisoned. They

should be marched in disgrace through the

streets of cities. They should be sent for

re-education, made to sit through

some kind of courses, and then publicly

repent. That starts to sound like some kind of

Chinese Red Guards. No, well, that’s

probably too much as well. Of course.

But let’s think about how these people

really should be punished, because

they are killers and hypocrites,

disgusting crooks. That is exactly why

you should join our campaign, our

Project 2019. Damn, I spent 26 minutes

talking about Brilyov and couldn’t

stop. I hope

I’ll still manage to cover a few other topics.

Join in, because, uh, this

regime rests on many things.

Bought judges, corrupt

police, total lies on state TV channels,

Brilyov, and so on. But one of the

most important supports of this rotten table

is, of course, the United Russia party,

which now controls everything. And we

have launched a project to fight

United Russia’s monopoly. I know all

your arguments; I’ll answer some

questions now. You’ll say to me: "Well, it’s

not just United Russia—there are also

the Communists, A Just Russia,

they’re all very similar." That’s true, they

really are all very similar, but they

are similar. And all these Communists,

A Just Russia, the LDPR members — they are in

such a pitiful state because they have

nothing.

They can’t even dare to speak up or

get cocky, because everywhere, 90, 80,

70 percent of everything is controlled by United Russia. And

our project is very simple. It concerns

non-party lists. That is the main

difference. A lot of people now

keep reminding me that I haven’t

come up with anything new. It’s the same thing you proposed

back in 2011: vote for any

party against United Russia. Back then there were

party lists. After we

ran our campaign and lowered the rating of

United Russia, they all but

got rid of party lists in the regions and very sharply,

in any case, reduced them and kept

winning everywhere, because everywhere

there is a single-member district candidate. That

single-member candidate is from United Russia. Say, in

some Ryazan City Duma (city council), or in

the city council of your district, or in

the legislative assembly of your region.

United Russia candidates always won because they had

a guaranteed base there of 35%. And

everyone else gets split up. And now,

why am I announcing this now? Well, in

a sense, a window of

opportunity has opened, because first,

voter turnout has fallen sharply; fewer

people are going to these elections, and

with a smaller number of votes we can

affect the results. Second:

the increase in the retirement age. It’s just that

right now, among those who always go to

vote — pensioners — there has emerged

a fairly large number of people

who now always vote against United

Russia. Let’s now briefly

take a few seconds, one minute, on the

math behind this smart voting,

after which I’ll continue. Hi, this is

Navalny, and now I’ll tell you how

we are going to defeat United Russia in

elections. A typical United Russia candidate in

regional elections in a large city

gets between 35 and 45 percent.

Against the United Russia candidate, the majority of voters

vote for other candidates — 55

or 65 percent. But those votes are split

among the so-called systemic

opposition. Some go to the Communist,

some to Zhirinovsky’s party. A Just Russia

gets a little, Yabloko gets a little,

someone else gets a little. And just like that, your

interests in the local parliament are once again

represented by a United Russia member. How hard would it really

be for us to agree

to vote United Russia out? Not hard.

We need to bring to the polls

just an additional 3 percent of new

voters. And among those who have already

voted against United Russia, we need

to persuade one-third to vote smart — that is,

to consolidate, according to our plan,

around a single candidate. That is more than

realistic,

guys. I know what your main

question is. I keep track of what people ask. Here’s

one of the main questions. People say to me:

“Alexei: why the hell should we

vote for the systemic parties?”

The Communists, the LDPR. Why not give us

some decent people instead, and we’ll

vote for them?”

Sure. Of course I want to vote

for decent people, but those candidates aren’t

allowed to run. Our party isn’t being registered,

so it would be a great system

if we could, for example, nominate

this list of decent people. We will

of course nominate one for the elections to the

Moscow City Duma. In strong districts, we will nominate

excellent candidates, and you

will see that they are the strongest

candidates. But there is a high probability

that they won’t be allowed to run, our party won’t be

registered, and so regardless

the elections will still come, and still

40 percent of the population, maybe 20 percent,

will go to vote. We can ignore it,

and let United

Russia keep controlling 80 percent. But right now

the situation is such that with relatively

small efforts, if we

agree among ourselves and understand that, well, here in

this district, really, our

candidate whom we nominated — if he

is still on the ballot, let’s go vote for him.

Where our candidates were not allowed to run, we

will simply vote for candidate number

two — a Communist or an A Just Russia candidate.

Of course, that Communist

or A Just Russia candidate, or that LDPR member, may

turn out to be a rather unpleasant

character, but our task is this:

if United Russia has 70 percent,

to bring it down to 60, or better yet 40 — then

that systemic opposition will start acting

differently. The next argument I hear

all the time is: so what, you want

to make us vote for

the Communists? Fine, we voted for

the Communists, and then they either joined United

Russia or started doing the same thing

that United Russia does. Yes, they did

start doing that now, because when

Communists — or, let’s say, non-

United Russia candidates — get elected somewhere, that is

an absolutely isolated case. Say

someone became governor, but his

legislative assembly is meanwhile completely

packed with United Russia people. Everywhere, nothing but

United Russia members. All the deputies are from United Russia.

He can’t do anything. But when

we reduce the level of voting for United

Russia and deprive them of their majority, you

you’ll see that this opposition will be a completely

different kind of opposition. But right now,

no one needs to negotiate with

any other parties, because they’re nobody.

They’re there, living under the table and

begging for scraps. But when, in order to pass

some law, United Russia needs

to go and strike a deal with someone,

then maybe the law won’t be so

idiotic—and that’s exactly what will happen. The law

won’t be so idiotic. Right here,

my friends, is the ideal situation:

we have a party,

we nominate people, we hold

primaries, identify the best candidates,

and then in the election we enthusiastically campaign

for our best candidates. But here

is the current situation, which is that

everywhere, 90% are from United Russia.

Sure, it would be great if something happened

and we suddenly jumped straight to that point.

And we’ll be doing a lot of things as well. So

we’re not giving up rallies, or

investigations, or anything else. In other words,

we believe it would be right

to move straight there. But if we can’t

make that move,

then let’s at least move over here.

Let’s move to the point where United

Russia has lost its majority at least in

the biggest cities—Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Let’s move to where United

Russia is reduced to a minority. Places where,

well, it has already lost gubernatorial

elections: Irkutsk Region, Khabarovsk

Region, Vladimir Region. All of this

can be done, and of course it must be done.

Now, these systemic parties are not our heroes,

let’s be honest. And we will have

to work for people who are not

our heroes at all and are generally questionable figures,

but we’re still working for ourselves, because

this is about breaking United Russia’s monopoly.

The third argument I want to touch on today.

Ah, well, I just saw on Facebook

and VKontakte that people are writing:

“So you’re suggesting I vote for the LDPR

or for some communist—Stalinists?”

Never in my life. What am I, an idiot?

You are not voting for a communist or for

a Stalinist. You are voting for a function. You

are voting

for there to be fewer United Russia members.

Right now they’re a monolith; they control

everything. So let’s at least take these

hopeless United Russia people—these Sergeis and Brilyovs—and

dilute them with a couple, three,

or better yet a dozen

representatives from other parties. There will,

of course, be some

communists, Stalinists, and various other

people—but they are different. Communists

are different too. Some of them are fairly

decent, and some are not, but in

any case, some kind of confrontation will begin.

These will be new

parliaments at the city level,

legislative assemblies where there is at least

some clash between factions. And we will

watch it happen. Say, in the Moscow City Duma,

one faction argues with another because

they can’t push through a United Russia

bill. You have to admit, that’s far

better than what we have now. Right now you

don’t hear anything about this at all, because

United Russia passes any laws it wants

just like that. The Presidential Administration

sends over a bill, and it gets passed within

a day, because United Russia

controls the entire process—committees,

commissions, everything. So if at least

a couple of committees are controlled by other

parties, that is still, you have to admit,

much better. All right, I see questions here, and

I’m being asked one. Ruslan asks:

“Alexei, in Moscow the systemic parties

aren’t popular. If people used to run under their banners,

it was only because they were afraid of being barred from the ballot.”

But those fears didn’t materialize. And, Ruslan, this is

a popular point of view—and an equally

completely wrong one. What do you mean

“not popular”? Go and look

at the election results in Moscow for the

Moscow City Duma. In 18 districts, communists

came in second and got more than

20%.

A Just Russia is popular too. The LDPR isn’t popular in

Moscow or St. Petersburg, but the communists,

A Just Russia, and various

independent candidates are quite

popular. In that sense, this is really just

a widespread misconception

among people living in the centers of big cities, who

think, “Well, among us here,

no one is going to vote for

communists, because we’re all such

educated, respectable people.” But all the centers

of education and science in Russia,

Novosibirsk Akademgorodok (a major Soviet-era scientific research hub),

places like Obninsk, the centers

of the biggest cities—look there, and you’ll see that

in Moscow’s Gagarinsky District, where

all those who work in the Academy of

Sciences live—who is the deputy there? A communist.

They vote that way out of protest, and so

they vote for the systemic opposition. There isn’t another one,

and people are simply used to going to

elections, and they will keep going to elections. And

even in those elections that should

properly be boycotted—and such elections do exist and

will continue to exist—I wasn’t able

to convince them this time. They went anyway.

Well, I convinced some, not others. They

went and voted. They’re used to it. But let

this voting at least serve some purpose.

We will vote in a coordinated way

to knock out the United Russia candidate. That is exactly why

our project exists. I still have a lot more to say

I’ll spend some time answering questions.

Let’s do a few more. Uh, a couple more.

I’ll take a couple more, but I’ll keep

answering them constantly, because until I

can persuade,

well, 15% of the country’s voters—which is a lot.

It’s a big, ambitious task.

Not an easy one. To win, uh, for example,

in Moscow and St. Petersburg we need a much

smaller number of people. But across the

country as a whole, I want to convince 15% of the population that

this is how they need to vote—

in a coordinated way. Then we really will

deprive United Russia of its majority everywhere. And

it will be a different country, despite, I don’t

know, the police, the courts, and everything else.

So I’m going to devote a lot of attention to this.

A few more questions now.

Unicorn Gerald asks me: “What’s the point

of Smart Voting if you’re

being denied party registration?”

Unicorn “Gerald.” Well, that’s exactly why I’m

proposing Smart Voting.

If I had a party—if you and I had our

unicorn party—we wouldn’t need

to come up with any kind of Smart Voting.

I’d be sitting here with you saying, “Guys,

vote for the Russia of the Future party,”

which is what my program is called, because

it’s the best party. And you’d say to me,

Unicorn Gerald supports me. No

problem, Lyosha, I’ll vote for you. But

we can’t do that, because

we don’t have a party, because Putin

understands that our party would fairly

quickly defeat him. And you and I,

Unicorn, face a basic choice. Either we

ignore elections altogether and say,

they’re dishonest, they’re dishonest, they’re

unfair, they’re unfair. And

we just don’t care—we don’t want to use them

as a mechanism at all. That’s

fine. We have, well, other things

to do besides that. But then the

40% of the population that still goes

to vote says to us: “Guys,

have you abandoned us? Hello, Alexei,

Unicorn, Gerald—have you

left us behind? We watch your program too.”

We’re, well, we’re going to the polls. Just tell

us who to vote for. We can’t

opt out. We’re used to it. We believe in

the procedure, blah blah. We’re election observers,” they’ll

say, yes. So, uh, while you’re

off doing your own

great things, at least give us

instructions on what to do in the election.”

So that’s what we’re giving them—guidance. I’m not saying

this is the main grand strategy. We

won’t do only this and nothing else. We’ll

be doing many things. But if you

still go to elections, I insist that

going to vote without taking part in

the 2019 Smart Voting system

is meaningless. It has absolutely

no point. Vote smart,

vote with purpose.

Hedgehog in the Fog joins the unicorn

and says: “Why should I vote

for someone I don’t like?” Because

why can’t I vote for

a United Russia candidate if I like him? Not all

United Russia members are bad. Great question, Hedgehog.

All United Russia members are bad, because they are

members of the United Russia party. From that

point of view, they are part of a monopoly that

doesn’t let anyone else in. And just because

this particular United Russia member, in personal interactions,

may seem like a nice enough guy to you,

well, let him remain a nice enough guy and

go take a walk down the street. But

when he runs for office,

he is building a huge wall that

protects

the authorities from you, Hedgehog in the Fog, from

Unicorn Gerald, from Alexei

Navalny, from the Communists, the LDPR, from

everyone under the sun. Taken together, they’ve built

a fence and they let no one in. But right now the system is arranged

so that you and I can’t even

get near that fence. So, well,

some fairly weak

people have been allowed in, people who can’t climb

over the fence. Right now, you and I are simply

building a ladder,

and with that ladder we’ll at least try to get these

weak little guys from the systemic parties

over the fence. And

once we get enough of them over

in sufficient numbers, dear Hedgehog in the Fog, they

will, after all, be able to oppose United Russia there

in some way. One way or another, they’ll

be weakened. And then you and I—Navalny,

Hedgehog, and Unicorn Gerald—

will break down the gates ourselves and walk in

and win real elections with

real candidates. And now Anna Rey

asks me: “Alexei, about

your Smart Voting—don’t you think

that United Russia members could simply

move into controlled parties if

those start winning? That would also create

the appearance of democracy.” Well no, they won’t,

of course, switch over. And

let me rephrase the question this way: all sorts of

local, regional guys—well,

some, I don’t know, local businessmen

or local activists, the kind of

hustling, maybe even somewhat

amoral types—right now they think: “Aha, I

want to become a deputy; where do I need

to go? To United Russia.” And they go to

United Russia. And United Russia says,

“Well, if you want to become a deputy,

kiss Sergei Brilyov’s foot. And lick

Putin’s portrait. So there you are—you have to

kiss the foot, lick the portrait, and then you become

a United Russia member. But as a result of Smart

through voting, we will create a system in which

some local, I don’t know,

businessman or activist will think: "But I’m not going to join

United Russia (the ruling pro-Kremlin party), because

it’s difficult there, because Navalny

together with Hedgehog and Gerald the Unicorn,

have set up Smart Voting, and

now a United Russia candidate in the center of any

major city, first and foremost, will have a hard time

getting elected. I’d better go

join some other systemic

party instead. That’s what we want to achieve."

Again, this is a fight against monopoly.

Your vote is a vote

against United Russia’s monopoly

and most often, let’s be honest, it is a vote for

a rather unpleasant guy, because

the decent guys won’t be allowed onto the ballot, and

the decent guys... I mean, for the Moscow City Duma

we are putting people forward.

Ilya Yashin wants to run. He’s a great

candidate, even though he hasn’t previously

taken part in elections and doesn’t have

a track record of winning

a lot of votes, but we understand that he is

a strong candidate. Yankauskas, Milov,

there are some Yabloko party people who have received

high percentages. Our own Kolya

Lyaskin wants to run. I hope that the Anti-Corruption Foundation

will nominate a couple of

people, and we will create a fair

system in which, well, we

will try, as much as possible. In

80% of cases, it will be a fairly

technical decision. We will see who

came in second. In another 10% of cases

it will also be fairly easy to understand who the

strongest candidate is. There will be 10% of

conflict or disputed situations, but we

will still make a decision that is

political, deliberate, but fair and

honest. And you will see that it is, uh,

political, but fair and honest.

And these will be decent people. You’ll be glad

to root for them. But what can the damned

authorities do? They will try to

get rid of all the decent guys and girls. And

the girls and the guys—they will try to

wipe them all out politically.

They will wipe them out. Most likely, it will feel

very unpleasant, because we will have to

vote only for all the others. But that is what we

will do, because they still

weaken United Russia. I am going to

talk about this a great, great deal and

for a very, very long time.

I’ll even release videos specifically about it. And

keep asking these questions. All

the questions you write to me now,

I will carefully note down, group together, and

answer. Next, I really do

need to say something to you about Kerch,

because,

well, of course, it is the main

topic everyone is discussing.

I won’t hide it: the fact that all this

has become the main topic of discussion

has irritated me, because, well,

Putin’s goal, essentially,

is being achieved. You and I are not discussing

Brilev, not the introduction of VAT on sausage, not

the falling standard of living. Instead, once again, we are discussing

some Kerch incident, some unclear thing.

That is, once again we are discussing some kind of

aggression against Ukraine or aggression on behalf of

Ukraine. In other words, Putin’s goal

is being achieved. Russian citizens are once again

discussing foreign policy problems. And

when people discuss foreign policy

issues, something short-circuits in many people’s

heads, and basically they

think they need to support any—uh,

no, rather, they think that any position

coming from the television is some kind of

pro-Russian position. Therefore, they believe they must

support what’s on TV, support

Putin, because that is what

patriotism consists of.

And the leader of them all, the absolute patriot Sergey

Brilev, carefully presents on television

a kind of framework for how we all

are supposed to speak. And right now, of course, that

framework is that Ukraine

committed a monstrous provocation.

So, we have dealt with that provocation.

Let’s start with this:

that

uh

conceptually, so to speak. I don’t even want

to get into discussing right now

maritime law or anything else.

Let’s just, as reasonable people,

work it out logically. So who is more

in the right here: Russia or Ukraine? I just want

us, as ordinary normal

people, to cast aside all the nonsense. Let’s

start by simply looking at

the map,

at what that place looks like. You can see that

Mariupol is in one place, and

Odesa is in another.

How can a ship from Mariupol sail

to Odesa except through this

Kerch Strait? How, in general, can it get out of

the Sea of Azov, where a significant part of the coastline belongs to

Ukraine—we are not even discussing

Crimea right now, whose it is or isn’t—but they

have no other objective way

except to pass through that strait.

So in such cases, well, what happens is

again, the reasonable thing. People

say: "Well then, the Sea of Azov is

an inland sea of Russia and Ukraine." And

we all sail through it as we wish,

simply observing navigation rules,

because that is logical. If we have decided

to take this kind of position, then to hell with

them. They’re supposedly so bad there, doing whatever...

Poroshenko says—or maybe they say in the Rada (the Ukrainian parliament)—

they shout: "Those scoundrel Ukrainians." Or just

that we don't like them. Or say something like this:

it so happened that this shore is ours on this side,

and this shore is ours on that side too. So

we won't allow it—let them pay us money.

If we've decided to act so cleverly, then

we shouldn't forget this—I've just shown you this little

piece of the map. Move it

a little lower. Let's move it a little

lower and see what happens if we're not

the only ones being so clever. That's not the piece

of the map. I need a different one.

All right, apparently there is no second piece of the map.

Well then, fine, I'll appeal to your

knowledge of geography.

The Black Sea is enclosed in exactly the same way

as the Sea of Azov. There too, there are two

shores and a very narrow passage there—

the Bosporus and the Dardanelles. And on one side

there is Turkey, and on the other side there is Turkey. And

if Erdogan suddenly starts doing what

we are doing, saying: "Who do those

Russians [ __ ] think they are? Hell, I don't even

know who else is on the Sea of Azov—why

are they barging in on me? This is mine. And let

let's switch things on here now and start

using our border patrol boat there to bully

someone around."

And what are we supposed to do in that situation?

Well, that's exactly why international

law exists—international maritime law,

to say: "Look, if there is no

other way to sail out of

our inland sea, say, into the

Mediterranean or the Atlantic Ocean,

to go catch herring, then, well, you are obliged

to let them pass. That's how it works—you are obliged

to let them pass." And in that sense, well, there's no need

to stage this clown show and

invent some special measures

against these Ukrainian boats,

whether military or civilian, I don't know. Well, if

there is no other route, they must

be allowed through, just as for us there is no

other route to sail into the Mediterranean.

So the Turks let us through.

It's a NATO country, and we sail through, uh,

to go do something involving Syria or whatever.

And our relationship with Turkey is quite complicated.

Still, we sail through, and they must

let us pass. There is no other route, because

if you close the only

sea route there, then that is effectively

a declaration of war. You shouldn't do that. And

in that sense, unquestionably, it is

the Russian authorities who are now acting

rashly, which of course is very much

to the advantage of the Ukrainian authorities. Here I

know I've immediately stepped onto thin ice. And

the comments will be full of

angry Ukrainians who

believe that it is absolutely

impossible and unacceptable to criticize their, uh,

leadership. But unquestionably, right now this is

a win-win situation both for Poroshenko

and for Putin. And this martial

law that has now been introduced in

Ukraine, and this decree on martial

law—uh, you know, here, generally speaking,

I don't like commenting on

Ukrainian events, because, well, I

basically believe—and this is well known—that

the war with Ukraine was started

so that we would endlessly discuss

Ukraine and not discuss our own situation.

Because, quite rightly, people tell us:

why are you meddling in

our affairs at all? Discuss your own Russia. I

completely agree. Ukraine doesn't interest me;

I'm interested in Russia, but

still. Listen, let's

be honest, yes? Let's take Putin

for a moment. Good Lord, this is going to be

awkward. Twenty seconds of

Putin saying something that's actually hard not to

agree with.

And how are border guards supposed to act?

Military vessels entered the territorial

waters of the Russian Federation and are not responding.

It's unclear what they intend to do.

There are clear signs of, uh,

a provocation prepared in advance,

designed specifically so that afterward

it could be used as a pretext

to introduce martial law

in the country.

Let's be honest again: in

Ukraine, martial law was not introduced

when there was actual, full-scale war—tanks,

planes were going down, people were being shot at every day.

We saw a real war there. They did not

introduce martial law. They did not introduce

martial law when...

There were hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing, and martial

law was not introduced. Now they brought it in over

some incident that, in essence, was of course simply

utterly minor. Well, on the scale

of what was happening there, there was

one person wounded, people arrested—well,

of course not entirely insignificant, but

compared with what had happened before, let's

say it plainly—and suddenly

the entire Ukrainian leadership

snapped to attention,

put on camouflage uniforms, and declared that

they, uh,

had to introduce martial law.

But why now? Yes, it's obvious why

they act this way—well,

let's put it this way,

cynical politicians in every country and

at all times do this. It's not just Ukraine. Because

on the eve of an election, it benefits you

to completely shift the agenda, not

to discuss corruption or

anything else. You declare martial

law, and you become the king of the information space.

the agenda. You tell everyone: "Right, this is not the time

to discuss, I don't know, things like fuel prices,

it's not the time to discuss some

rumors about corruption in my government,

when we're under martial law. Because

guys, I don't have time right now to sit here with

you. I have to go to a meeting,

and I need to put on this military cap

right now,

dust off my epaulettes and go to the

military council meeting to

discuss brilliant military operations."

Like, I'll put Ukraine's fleet on

combat alert, because, well, we all

understand that this is complete

nonsense. And of course it's convenient, right before

the election, to impose martial law. And everyone

is happy.

Putin is happy, and Poroshenko is happy too.

It's also very telling that this

video, uh, of the, well,

border guards,

uh,

moving in. Let's watch it. There should be

all those kinds of words bleeped out in it.

Have you seen it? Let's watch it

again. 37 seconds. 10. Stop

engines. Stop engines.

Turning to port.

Port thrust.

Port thrust acknowledged.

Helm, increase.

Reversing.

get out

[music]

come on

come on, all of it

left

821

forward

port thrust to the side, left

Bar KP

reverse, stop engines

helm acknowledged on board

By the way, I should note: if anyone needs

proof of who exactly

initiated this provocation, then this

video, well, it quite clearly

shows that the whole thing was a

Russian operation, because on an FSB vessel,

you know that these days even ordinary

personnel, ordinary soldiers, are forbidden

to have smartphones.

They're forbidden to use social

media, forbidden to take photos, and these

security officers run around, the ones

from what is called the special department

of the Ministry of Defense, making sure

the soldiers aren't filming anything. And then

immediately after this event, footage

shot on an FSB vessel

ends up online. And right away it

is discussed on television. But obviously

that's exactly the point, and then there's also this

whole thing: "Crush him, crush him." Very

revealing. Here's what I wanted to tell you. We

have this great tool called

Trending Today, which, uh, shows the most

interesting things on social media. I

really recommend using it. Search for

Trending Today, because we

saw that on the day this recording was published,

it was simultaneously being

gleefully used by both

politicized

well, that is, Russian propagandists

and politicized Ukrainians. So

let's take a look. For

Russian propagandists, this really

became a symbol of toughness. They weren't at all

embarrassed that there was an officer there, that

some captain was shouting obscenities

and behaving in a way that, well, wasn't exactly

very dignified. No, it was, it was

awesome. There was also this tweet, which I

liked. It said that this "Crush him." Well

and then, with more profanity, it should become

the motto of Russia's foreign policy.

They just love

this kind of crude, pathetic brutality.

A boat rams someone there, no big deal. And

so, as Russia, we're apparently supposed to

run everyone over with this boat too. And

the Ukrainian blogosphere, well, it

naturally,

of course, pushed this recording just as much

but from the other

side, saying: "Just look

at them, they're just animals, they're

not people. That's not an officer, that's a brute, and he

well, this is an obvious display of aggression,

uh, and so on and so on and so

forth." And that's why I say that this is, basically,

for politicians, for the

political establishment, for the

current leadership of one

country and the other, a win-win situation.

Of course, the ones who lost out were, first and foremost,

Russian citizens, because

the dollar went up, the ruble

fell, which means prices will

rise, and some new sanctions will be imposed.

So while those people over there

are enjoying themselves, having fun. This whole

propaganda gang thinks it's great:

"Crush him." And we'll be the ones to pay for all of it.

It's all very, uh, very sad. By the way,

speaking of "crush him"—I was curious,

so I looked into who else the FSB crushes. And

when these FSB border patrol boats

ram other people in the same way, it actually

looks a lot less

glamorous. Let's watch a short clip from Kamchatka

(a peninsula in Russia's Far East).

No, it's fine, it didn't get tangled.

[music]

Well, I assume they were some kind of

poachers, of course. They set...

the net and the border guards—well, it looks

it really does look like sheer brutality. Well,

did you really absolutely have to

run over their boat? If they are

poachers, then detain them,

seize those nets, seize the boat afterward. But

why was all of this necessary? It's this kind of

swagger, just brazen

swagger from people who were given

an ID, were given weapons, and so

they think they absolutely need to

drive over that boat there, and then

from the deck talk to that poacher,

who became a poacher because he has

nothing to eat, excuse me, because

there is no other work there. And to talk to

him like that. You have to admit, it no longer

looks so cool and powerful. This whole

"crush him. You take him on the right, I’ll take him on the left."

when this kind of thing is done to Russian citizens,

it doesn’t look nearly as

interesting. So, what I want

to say is that, unfortunately, this provocation

is undoubtedly Putin’s, and now they will

keep, I don’t know, savoring it and

enjoying it and extracting benefits from it.

And, uh, the two countries—or rather, I

of course don’t mean Ukraine as a whole,

but the leadership of Ukraine, which

will now happily keep

playing this game. They and Putin will keep tossing

the ball back and forth, and there will be this

cute little game about how

let’s not discuss the internal problems

of our countries, let’s discuss this endless

Kerch situation. But I, for one, would like to discuss

social issues, especially since we

have noticed that the social

agenda, which in principle should be present

in the media and, well, in internet media like this,

and on YouTube, for example, is basically

treated as some kind of marginal topic. Nobody

ever discusses it. And we, well,

as an experiment, simply

went a couple of times with the doctors’ union. I

have spoken about this on the program—they

carry out inspections of hospitals. So, uh,

they went to the hospital in Vidnoye,

where doctors are being fired and wages are

tiny, despite the fact that the Moscow region is

wealthy. Then they went to

Balashikha, where doctors are basically treated, well, like

traffic cops, you know? Traffic cops are told:

"Go on, collect bribes. At the end

of the shift, you have to hand over 10,000 rubles

to the shift supervisor, and he has to hand over 5,000

to someone else, and someone else hands over another

3,000 to somebody else. And so you get this pyramid,

a pyramid, a pyramid. And it turns out that

right now in healthcare, this kind of

pyramid exists. And dentists,

for example,

are told: "Come on, you’re rich

dentists, why are you pretending to be poor here?"

You should be paying 15,000 rubles every month."

And nothing helps them, nothing gets

done. And what’s interesting is that this

union activity—we are following it with great

interest, documenting it—actually works. They

removed one chief physician after our first

report, and after the second report they

suspended this

deputy chief physician, who

was extorting bribes and building this

corruption pyramid. In that sense,

we want to cover more and more

things like this—specifically social

issues in healthcare and education.

So why am I saying all this?

First, support this doctors’ union.

And second, uh, write to us

—the Doctors’ Alliance—write to us and tell us

whether you like that we are making

segments and reports on this topic or not.

Is it worth devoting more

time to this, or would you rather I

just keep churning out politics here—Ukraine,

Solovyov, Kiselyov, Brilyov, and all that

stuff? About music and, Lord forgive me, about

rappers. Never.

Things are arranged in such a way that apparently I will never

be able to stop talking about them,

because remember, Putin declared the Year of

Youth after we held the rallies on March 26,

March 26

of 2017, I think. I’ve already even

forgotten when all that was. Quite

a long time ago. And

Putin got scared—what do you mean, young people

have suddenly gone out to rallies and are all

dissatisfied? There were meetings, you

remember, and some bloggers spoke in the

State Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament), and Medvedev was tasked with dealing with

youth policy. And everyone was giving

various pieces of advice, and there were endless

experts and discussions about what the authorities

would do in terms of youth

policy to attract young people to

their side. And they kept thinking, kept

thinking, and came up with a brilliant idea.

Ban everything, damn it. Just look

at the bans this autumn. There is, there is

such a thing as a map of bans.

You see? In Russia in 2018,

a map of bans appeared. Just

take a look, I mean, yes, there’s

Makhachkala and Vladikavkaz, of course, but everything

else—places where you could at least

theoretically suppose that the local

population is genuinely, well,

annoyed by, I don’t know, naked

women running around on stage—though nobody has

naked women running around on stage. Everything

else is perfectly ordinary places where any

concerts have been allowed for the last 30 years

or 35 years. I, for one,

was a big fan of rock music back in

my final years of school and in

my student years.

Well, those were already wild times. I mean,

it was the very beginning of the 1990s. Nobody

there was some concert, I think,

I was on my way to some punk concert, I won’t

even pretend to remember which one. And we got there, and

it had either been banned, or those

punks had been kicked out of the club. Something

like that. I mean, that kind of thing hadn’t happened. It had all

ended in the late 1980s.

And then suddenly, banned concerts again,

banned musicians.

A completely fantastical

uh,

some kind of

utterly absurd explanation. I saw

a headline saying that all these rappers

are working for Ukraine.

What does that even, what does that even

mean? What, the hell, are they— I’m already, I’m already,

sorry, I’ve run the program a bit long.

Turns out I’ve been going on for more than an hour

already. Let me just

pull myself together a bit. What does it even mean

for rappers to be “working for Ukraine”?

It’s unclear. And it’s really great that

people did get outraged, after all, and there is

some kind of response, I guess. I went with

my family—well, without Zakhar, actually, he’s

too little for that. He’s

too young. I went to the concert

that took place in Moscow, the concert in

support of solidarity. Let’s watch 39 seconds

of it. There were some fairly

well, moderately political, but still

political speeches there. Oxxxymiron, 39 seconds.

When they came for the communists,

I stayed silent, because I was not

a communist.

When they came for the Jews, I stayed silent,

because I was not a Jew.

When they came for me, there was no one left

who could defend me, or

something like that. And it’s clear that

this is a problem not only of our time and

place; it’s a problem in all times and in

all countries. But we do not live in other

times or in other countries. We live

here. And that is why this problem is, for us now,

relevant here.

And by that point they had already released the rapper

Husky, and hoped that, well, nothing would come of it,

that no concert would happen, or people

wouldn’t go to it, or there wouldn’t be any kind of

political tension. And everyone took this

to mean that, well, they let him go

not because they were frightened,

but because they realized they were wrong. And some

ridiculous, ridiculous things were written by

Margarita Simonyan, saying that the Presidential Administration

had understood

that local officials had, so to speak, gone too far. And

that’s why Husky was released. Everything’s fine,

guys, don’t worry. But then

literally the very next day there was a completely

hellish situation with the musicians of the group IC3PEAK.

We even got a short

comment from them. Navalny Live, 30

54 seconds. Let’s watch it after all,

because, well, Lyuba Sobol called me

and said, “Can I, let me get

a comment from IC3PEAK, because in

Perm they’re being hunted by the police and the FSB (Russia’s security service).” But I, uh,

typed IC3PEAK into YouTube.

Great group, by the way. Uh, many,

many millions of views. So it turns out I’m

really out of the loop. But I’m watching and

thinking: why exactly is the FSB after them? It’s not clear.

If they were calling for some kind of terrorist attack,

that would be one thing, but they really were being pursued by

the FSB. Here’s what they themselves told us. 54

seconds.

Hi. Kolya and Nastya here.

Hi. Yes, we’ve just made it to

the apartment where we’re

staying in Perm. We really have

had suspected FSB officers

on our tail this whole time. We drove around the city

trying to shake them. Their task

was to escort us out of the city, or

make sure that we were leaving it, or

would leave soon, and that we were not

planning to give any more concerts here

today.

They were very persistent, despite the fact

that we had a lawyer with us. They still

insisted that they

absolutely had to escort us.

They demanded to see our train tickets,

which of course we did not show them,

because we had already been searched before the train

in Kazan.

So, I mean, there was no aggression, no

use of force against us. Everything

was very polite and calm, but the people did not

identify themselves. When asked what was going on, why,

they gave no answers. Just: we will

escort you.

So people were literally declared some kind of

enemies of the people, enemies of the state,

because, well, they’re musicians, and yet

colossal resources were deployed. The mayor

of Perm shows up to cancel the concert.

Then they’re chased down. They hide somewhere.

It’s some kind of, well, comic

and at the same time idiotic detective

story, where lots of different agencies

are hunting down the musicians of IC3PEAK, because

because, because the state needs

someone to fight. And at the same time the state

is handing out awards. It fights enemies. And

at that very same time, somewhere there in the Kremlin, Putin

was decorating those who, well, on behalf of the country, on behalf

of the people—at the same time he

is protecting the public from IC3PEAK and

rewarding those who are dear and pleasing to that

public. Let’s take a look at whom exactly he

was awarding with the Order of Merit for

to the Fatherland, second class or something,

or first class, to Usmanov—the man who

robbed all of us. The man who

first stole at Gazprom, and then went on to

do nothing more than ensure that the profits

from mining and processing plants—well, that is,

they dug resources out of our land, sold them

abroad, and kept the money there, leaving the profits

in offshore companies so that

they would not even have to pay taxes here. In other words,

not only were we never paid for those raw materials,

they seized this mining and processing

plant, paid us nothing for anything—we were

robbed, and now he is supposed to be rewarded. For what

exactly should he be rewarded? What services has he rendered

to the Fatherland? That he bought the yacht

Dilbar for €450 million with our money?

For living there on that yacht abroad

and only coming here in order to

I don’t know, switch on some huge

counting machine that no longer counts

banknotes but suitcases full of money. Who else

did they decorate? Let’s take a look at who this

young, uh, little dude is. Maybe some of you

don’t know. Young Rotenberg,

by the way, speaks Finnish better

than he speaks Russian. A citizen,

I believe, of Finland. And young

Rotenberg was awarded the Order of

Friendship.

For what?

Who needs him at all? Who needs them? Who

in this country values them or is grateful to them? Well,

apart from some of their servants who

work for them. All these people—why

are they being decorated in our name while

at the same time, well, this band IC3PEAK,

whether you like them or not, at least has

millions of views,

millions of people—hundreds of thousands of people—

appreciate their work. They bring them

joy and happiness. People go to their

concerts and pay money for those concerts.

And the clubs receive that money and pay

their employees’ wages. The group

benefits both people and the economy. But

those two, on the contrary, steal. And yet,

some are hunted down by the FSB (Russia’s security service), while others are

ostentatiously decorated in the Kremlin. And that—

well, that is, of course, a brilliant

youth policy. That really is, uh, what

they came up with. And this is, of course, the answer

to those who think some kind of thaw

is possible, or that this Kremlin

might learn from its idiotic

mistakes. Naively, you may think that they

do something idiotic, like jailing the rapper

Husky, but then say to each other, "Well,

we kind of messed up there, let’s

stop doing that." No,

I see Husky, L, Pharaoh, Monetochka,

Matrang—there is already some list of

so-called extremist groups. Good Lord, who

compiled it? By what criteria

was it even compiled? Who on earth thought of

banning Monetochka?

There is no explanation for this. And it will never

end, because these people want to

devour everyone. And even though I’ve

run over time, I won’t respect myself

if I don’t say something about Sergei

Mokhnatkin, whom they are devouring, well,

almost literally. I

even know him a little. Uh, well, sort of

like that. Hello, hello. He is

a man—an elderly man already.

He used to go to rallies. And at one of

those rallies he was arrested, simply because

he happened to be passing by there, and he

wasn’t even taking part. The police were dragging

some woman away somewhere, and he stood up

for her. And so they slapped him with his first

prison term, uh, because he had allegedly struck

a police officer. No one saw this alleged blow

to the officer, and he was imprisoned,

I think, for three years. But he is the kind of person who,

despite being elderly,

is inwardly very tough—he just tells them all

to go to hell. My assumption

is that they wanted to recruit him, and

he told them where to go. I mean,

the point is, he served one sentence.

Then they pinned another charge on him: disrupting

the operation of the penal colony—that this old man,

supposedly wanted to stage a prison

riot. They kept him constantly in a punishment cell, gave

him another sentence, and broke

his spine, claiming, of course, that he

had simply fallen down the stairs or something. So,

they beat him, they torture him. And then

when this next sentence was already coming to an end,

they sent him back to a pretrial detention center (SIZO), pinning on him

yet another charge of disrupting

the operation of the colony—you can imagine

what scoundrels they are. It’s simply that they do not

like him because he turned out to be

such a steadfast person. And they

simply decided to kill him,

and they are killing him. They sent him again to

the SIZO. What danger does he pose to society?

What is his guilt? What exactly did he do?

Tell us how exactly he

disrupted the operation of the colony.

They broke the spine of this sick

man. Even the prison doctors there

were saying, "He cannot be taken to

trial." Nevertheless, a week before

he was due to be released, just a week before,

they sent him back to the SIZO again, opened a new case, and are not

letting him out. There is this well-known expression:

"to let someone rot in prison." That is exactly what

they are doing in practice: trying

to let a man rot in prison, and they have almost

already done it. So, well, uh,

someday

there will be a Mokhnatkin list in Russia, including

among others, and those people who

were involved in this entire chain—them,

Of course, they really need to be locked up for a long time.

Because they are all executioners. And, and

someday there will be a big debate: "Why

should we imprison this court secretary

from the court where Mokhnatkin was tried? Well, he was

just a technical functionary." He was not

a technical functionary; he took part in

this procedure, which was called

rotting an innocent person in prison. That is why they

all need to be put on trial, and then they

all need to be sent, uh, to the place where

Mokhnatkin was imprisoned. Ah—

let's decorate the gallows with light bulbs. That's the title of

my final topic. And it cannot

be called anything else, because that is exactly

what the federal government is proposing.

Our minister came to

Krasnoyarsk. Krasnoyarsk is a very

special city in Russia. It is a major

industrial center. Uh, and it is known not

only for that; it also has this marvel—well,

a monstrous environmental situation. There, there is this,

I think it is the only city where there is

this sort of thing, legally established,

called the "black sky" regime.

It is declared from time to time because

the amount of emissions—well, the way things are set up there,

the wind patterns are such, and Krasnoyarsk

lies in a lowland. So this, this smog and

the emissions from the metallurgical plants,

the chemical plants, uh, well, from all this

industry, they just hang over

the city. And when especially—and it hangs there

all the time—but when there is especially a lot of it and

people are simply breathing some poisonous

substance instead of air, they declare

a "black sky" regime. For example, well,

they recommend keeping

the windows shut and not letting children go outside.

Just think what it is like to live that way.

And if you live in a city where

a "black sky" regime is declared, then you

simply know that you will live there, well,

for 10 years less, because you are breathing

poison. Then the environment minister came,

and he was asked: "So, like, dude, what

are we supposed to do?" Well then, let's

listen, uh,

to what exactly should be done, what his

breakthrough idea was regarding the pipes of

industrial enterprises that are harming

the residents of Krasnoyarsk. Fifty seconds from

an official.

One more point. Today, well, with the Universiade coming soon,

what strikes the eye

of a person who has come

from, as it were, beautifully made-up Moscow,

you know—though it was not always like that either.

I noticed, Sergey Semyonovich, that

basically, perhaps from the Tyumen

region, you brought something that Moscow did not have

before. You have a huge

number of chimneys sticking up, and they

really catch the eye and remind

everyone that it is not the little chimneys above private

homes that are doing the harm, but rather

the big smokestacks.

Think about decorating these smokestacks at night,

at night,

so that they would glow, so that there would be

some kind of

illumination on them. Well,

add a little, little something to these smokestacks,

some extra effect.

Well, that's a great idea, right? You are breathing

poison, that poison is coming from the smokestacks, and you

look at those smokestacks, and you constantly,

well, are reminded that, uh, you are

breathing poison. It ruins your mood?

So what, are you somehow stupid,

people of Krasnoyarsk? Haven't you figured it out yet?

Decorate the smokestacks with light bulbs, with Christmas garlands,

and you will look at these

smokestacks and feel happy, and you will not

be thinking about the fact that some kind of

poisonous smoke is coming out of them. You will simply

look and say: "Well, a light bulb is

pretty, it's a holiday decoration."

After all, we have come from

the metropolis. We are sophisticated people from

Moscow, ministers in black cars,

well, capable of understanding things. And as for

you, you just need to switch on a red

light, and you will feel better. And if it

is red, and then yellow, then green,

that will be even better. And you know, if on top of

the smokestack you put a ball like this,

like on a Christmas tree, or a star, that would be

really great. In Krasnoyarsk everyone would then

maybe even spontaneously

start dancing, forming circle dances

around the factory and rejoicing. This is

actually what is called

the federal government. The man did not say it as a joke,

after all. At a meeting there sits

a whole bunch of idlers. Each one has

an enormous salary. This one's salary is something like

a million rubles a year.

Decorate them with light bulbs, with light bulbs. That is why

I called this section: "Let's decorate

the gallows with some lovely

flowers." That is what they are all offering us.

But in the beautiful Russia of the future

everything will be different. In order

to throw these decorators, these light-bulb people,

out of their, uh, offices,

register on the website 2019.vво.

And I will see you next Thursday.

Bye.