YouTube Sobchak and bulk interview full. Alexei Navalny to Ksenia Sobchak: “Were Putin and Sobyanin scared? - Yes. – Navalny is a radical politician

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Ksenia Sobchak: "Politics in Russia is a very dangerous business"

Ksenia Sobchak's announcement of her intention to compete with Vladimir Putin on presidential elections became the main surprise of this political season. In an interview with the BBC, Sobchak told when she began to think about the nomination, how she helped Alexei Navalny with investigations, what was happening at her headquarters and why she reappeared on the air of federal channels.

"As soon as there was money, plums went"

BBC : In one of your interviews, you said that you offered Alexei Navalny to develop a plan of joint action in case he was not allowed to vote. When did this conversation take place?

ToseniaFROMobchak: I do not remember exactly, but it was about a week before his public address, where he called my views cannibalistic and so on. It was in autumn, probably in early September.

BBC : On June 9, on Dozhd, before your interview with him, Navalny said the following: "AtWell, whoever has presidential ambitions is Ksenia Sobchak. "Did he already understand what you were planning?

K.S. A: I think he didn't understand. Rather, it was a story related to our interview and my journalistic work. Many began to criticize him after this interview. I just did my job and in this sense I can’t comment on it somehow. I know that Alexei said some such things at the end of the interview.

BBC : It turns out that your readiness to announce the decision has matured in the fall?

K.S.: No, it was around July. I first started talking about this with my business friends, with those people who agreed to finance this campaign, in the second half of July.

My only connection to Putin is that when I was a 10-year-old girl playing Nintendo and Super Mario, he worked with my father Ksenia Sobchak, TV presenter

In August, it became clear that this is a serious thing. We began to develop a system, think about how we would do a campaign, and so on.

As soon as the money appeared, the account, plums immediately began to flow from the presidential administration, an article in " Vedomosti " (The Vedomosti newspaper was the first to mention Sobchak's possible participation in the race on September 1 - BBC).

It was amazing how this system works. Because exactly on the day the sponsors transferred me a large amount money for the campaign, and this article appeared. Apparently, somewhere there they realized that this was all serious. And it began.

"I helped Navalny with investigations"

BBC : Skeptics believe that Ksenia Sobchak's campaign is needed in order to let off steam because of Navalny's non-admission. Navalny has a plan to protest if he is not allowed. Here you appear and offer to vote for yourself. Doesn't this weaken Navalny?

K.S.: Not! How can I weaken it? On the contrary, I make myself stronger, because we are pursuing the same goals, it's just different methods. It's not for all people to be arrested - that's what they're ready for. Many people across the country oppose Putin. They are ready to do something, but they are not ready to go to jail. Why not provide them with a legal procedure? What's wrong with that? I really do not understand.

I am very realistic about my chances in these elections. I understand that the chance to become president is even less than the minimum Ksenia Sobchak, TV presenter

How can I weaken Navalny if I defend his position, if I believe that he should be allowed to vote if I support his principles? I even helped him do some of his research.

I'm just showing you the other way. I say: "Guys, if you want to go out and protest, great, you are heroes. Go ahead, this is the right thing, it's great that you are ready for it. But for those who are not ready to go out, there is another way."

Image copyright MARINA LYSTSEVA/TASS Image caption Ksenia Sobchak and Alexei Navalny at the rally "For Fair Elections", December 26, 2011

BBC : Can you give an example of at least one person who would try to get the most important position in the country without a political base, experience, a party behind his back? Who is your role model?

K.S. : I am very realistic about my chances in this election. I understand that the chance of becoming president is even less than the minimum. But there is the concept of elections that can turn the situation around, and there are many such examples. We remember the referendum on [Chilean dictator Augusto] Pinochet. He thought that he had all the power in the country, but after the referendum he lost his power.

I want this election to be a referendum on confidence in Putin. The people who will vote for me will not vote for me, but against Putin and his system.

And if there are many such people, it can turn the situation around, it will lead to big changes. It depends on how many come to the polls - we can even get a second round. But I can't do it alone.

Kremlin hugs

BBC : Regarding your meetings with President Putin. You said you had a conversation...

K.S.: I have already said everything on this subject. Friends, let's not suck on the same thing 148 times. I don't have any meetings with President Putin. During all this time I had one meeting related to the cinema.

By the way, I also met [Prime Minister Dmitry] Medvedev and other people who made a big difference for the cinema. political career, and before that he worked with his father.

My only connection to Putin is that when I was a 10-year-old girl playing Nintendo and Super Mario, he worked with my father.

I have said everything I could on this subject. Let's not go back to this!

Image copyright KRASILNIKOV STANISLAV/TASS Image caption As the BBC wrote, Sobchak's official announcement of his candidacy was preceded by a conversation with Vladimir Putin.

BBC : So there was no second meeting? Because they talk about it.

K.S.: Not! I had no meetings with President Putin either before or after. What are they talking about? When you tell me who specifically says what evidence they present, then we will talk about it again. In the meantime, these are all pests who are trying to strangle me in the arms of the Kremlin. I would not like to talk about it.

My calculation is that the Kremlin will underestimate me and consider my participation beneficial Ksenia Sobchak, TV presenter

BBC : You said that you were not going to criticize Putin personally, but the system he built. You also said that you consider the annexation of Crimea to Russia illegal. Isn't what happened to Ukraine Putin's personal actions?

K.S. A: Of course, these are his personal actions. I never said that I would not personally criticize Putin. I said that I would never criticize Putin as a person. In recent years, I did not like it when Navalny or someone else said something like “look at Putin, he has Botox” about Putin. I do not like it. "Putin is a thief" is not the language that I choose.

I have been saying all these years that Putin is the one who is responsible for the system he has built. Putin is the one who so strengthened the power of the FSB in our country. Putin is responsible for the fact that we are in international isolation.

Of course, what happened to Crimea is the result of Putin's policies. And I think that it is necessary to discuss what Putin is a politician, not a person.

"They want to make fun of the stupid blonde"

BBC : In an interview with Navalny, you said that the decision to admit him or not to the elections would be made personally by Putin..

K.S.: Undoubtedly.

BBC : It turns out that Putin also decides about your participation?

K.S. : Let's be realistic, we have all decisions regarding elections made by Putin and people who work for Putin. I contend that these elections can only be called "as if elections" - I want this label to stick during my campaign.

There is nothing extremist in my words. I have a group of lawyers who are ready to substantiate my every word Ksenia Sobchak, TV presenter

Not a single candidate, even one who has collected 300 or more thousand signatures, will be admitted if there is a strong-willed decision. My calculation is that the Kremlin will underestimate me and consider my participation beneficial.

A good politician differs from a bad one only in whether he managed to use the situation for his own benefit or was used by other people. I hope to be a good politician.

At the moment, the number one task is to collect signatures, then something will be decided there in high offices. I don't want to, frankly, get into their heads. Register - and thank God. The main thing is that I have my position, which I will continue to express. They will not register - this will show that they were scared even in their understanding of "blonde in chocolate."

Image copyright ALEXEI KOLCHIN/TASS Image caption Sobchak at a meeting with residents of Yekaterinburg on October 27, 2017

BBC : How" blonde in chocolate" ended up on" Russia-1" in the show with Andrey Malakhov? You recently said that you were included in the stop lists.

K.S.: Yes, of course, all my life I had stop lists on all channels. Why Malakhov invited is not a question for me. They decided that they would take advantage of the situation and laugh at the stupid blonde on their TV screens. Did they get to laugh in this program? It seems to me that no.

I managed to pronounce Navalny's name, and talk about Crimea, and urge all people to read real sources of information, and not propaganda on federal TV channels. I completed the program at least during this broadcast.

BBC : To some people in Russia who say Crimea should belong to Ukraine, threatens criminal prosecution. Some are under investigation and in prison. How do you manage to say such words without consequences?

K.S.: What do you mean succeed? There is nothing extremist in my words. I have a group of lawyers who are ready to substantiate my every word in terms of compliance with the law. I say what I think, and no one will make me say otherwise!

• Chief political consultant Sobchak left her campaign headquarters

"Not ready to expose others to fire"

BBC : The chief technologist of your headquarters, Alexei Sitnikov, announced his resignation. He said that everything is done on the knee, that there is no funding. explaine,what is the reason for such a demarche?

K.S.: Your information is not quite correct. There is no demarche here. The point is that I made a decision that we will not cooperate with Alexei Sitnikov. We don't have any conflict. I just looked at the work for two weeks and realized that it was more appropriate to go the other way. To save money and make our work efficient.

It is clear that a large team is always grinding. There are wonderful people who are building the headquarters today: these are Vitaly Shklyarov, Igor Malashenko.

Image copyright STANISLAV KRASILNIKOV/TASS Image caption Igor Malashenko, unexpectedly for many, headed the campaign headquarters of Ksenia Sobchak

BBC : But all of them are not involved in collecting signatures and organizing field work, for which Sitnikov was responsible. Who will do it now?

K.S.: We have resolved the issue of collecting signatures. We have a team of field workers who gather, with whom we actively meet.

BBC : Alexey Sitnikov said that his team of about 30 people from your headquarters is leaving with him.

K.S.: May I not comment on this? I think you need to talk to him separately.

BBC : Do you have in your headquarters [ Member of the Board of Directors of the Vedomosti newspaper] Demyan Kudryavtsev? They say that he cooperates with you.

K.S. A: I don't comment. You'd better ask Demyan Kudryavtsev about it.

BBC : So you don't confirm or deny?

K.S. A: I don't comment. Politics in Russia is a very dangerous business. I am ready to expose myself to firing squad, but there are no others against their will. Therefore, if they deem it necessary to speak, let them speak for themselves. Both businessmen and people who work in a team.

BBC : Which big businessmen agreed to finance the campaign?

K.S.: Once again I say, I cannot answer these questions for you. These questions are not for me, but for these businessmen. I can not substitute their business. When they want (hopefully soon), they will announce themselves.

Last night, Alexei Navalny became a guest of the show "Sobchak Live" on the Dozhd TV channel. The interview was broadcast on the Dozhd website and Youtube:

For those who were unable to watch it to the end, there are two good retellings. First published Nikita Likhachev(Tjournal) :

Sobchak started with how Navalny got his passport, then discussed the “nonsense” that the Facebook party writes about politics, and moved on to his economic program as a presidential candidate.

Navalny was unable to answer what percentage of Russia's consolidated GDP was spent on health care - but he had no clue in the form of a producer in his ear. Sobchak, who claimed experts were complaining about Russia's inflated social spending, was unable to give the exact name of economist Andrei Movchan when asked by Navalny.

The second - citation - can be read at Romana Dobrokhotova :

Summary of the interview Sobchak - Navalny:

Sobchak:
- Do you know how much Russia spends on healthcare from GDP?
Bulk:
- I know
Sobchak:
- How much? From the consolidated GDP! From the consolidated federal budget.
Bulk:
- Consolidated or federal??
Sobchak:
- Consolidated! How? From GDP!
Bulk:
- Ksenia, do you know how the consolidated budget differs from the federal one?
Sobchak:
- Well, there is a GDP figure for health care! I'll tell you now - 3.6% of GDP!
<...>
Bulk:
- It is necessary to reduce the military-police budget, and increase health care costs.
Sobchak:
- Many experts just say that social spending in Russia is inflated.
Bulk:
- What experts?
Sobchak:
- Quite a lot of experts
Bulk:
- Which for example?
Sobchak:
- When we were preparing for this program, we talked with a number of people ...
Bulk:
- Well, this is from the series "name me the percentage." Yes, there are no such experts!
Sobchak:
- Ovchan! Kudrin! Oreshkin!
Bulk:
- Who is who first?
Sobchak:
- Ovchan!
Bulk:
- Maybe you mean Andrei Movchan ?
Sobchak:
Marchan, yes!
Bulk:
- Marchan, Movchan or Ovchan?
Sobchak:
- Once again I say Mov-chan!

The last dialogue begs to be looped:

And, of course, the consonances do not end there.

So forchan or blockchain?

Obchak, Ovchak or Sobchak? UPD: WELL OF COURSE MOVCHAK

To the former editor-in-chief of RBC, these reservations seemed symbolic.

everything you need to know about talking about the economy in this interview

Andrey Movchan, director of the Economic Policy Program at the Carnegie Moscow Center, has not yet commented on this dialogue on his Facebook page. In the meantime, they write on the Web that Sobchak is "obliged to marry him" or at least send him a bouquet of flowers. But not only this fragment of the interview seemed strange to the commentators.

Navalny's monstrous interview with Sobchak
Practically a continuation of yesterday's "Anchovies and Daisies" and Usmanov's lawsuit.
Compromising evidence has been presented to Navalny since 2005, they are not allowed to finish a single phrase, the vocabulary of Sputnik and Pogrom is used to make the question “Russian or Russian?” discuss in high tones.

After this disgusting interview, Sobchak has to admit that his attacks on Moscow journalists are legitimate. Than such interviews - it's better to listen to him on YouTube. It is especially disgusting that she forced him to comment on Schlossberg's already refuted pseudo-quotes.

Many agreed that, against the background of an experienced video blogger, Sobchak looked unprepared.

I couldn't watch Navalny at Sobchak's. A classic example of how not to interview. And visible confirmation of why a video blog is a comfortable format for Navalny

how can you go to an interview with a person who has not closed his mouth for the last months and has already perfected all his rhetorical techniques without preparation? Not a single prepared and elaborated question.
That's why they don't look.

Prior to this, 2 hours before this broadcast, he appeared on his YouTube channel with a weekly Q&A session from viewers. Striking contrast. How useful information and smart thoughts on current events were there, and how much water and waste of time Sobchak had

Sobchak was clearly weak. A set of cliched questions, an attempt to fit the interlocutor into the primitive framework invented by her, aggressive interruption at every step, such as a "quote" 10 years ago. Sucks, in a word.
Navalny pretty much added. He completely held the blow, almost did not succumb to provocations. Appeared open and confident

... These are the questions: what books have influenced you - well, these questions are completely from the children's series, what else to ask when there is nothing to ask. Well, in the end I ran into "what are you talking about, Xenia ?!" Big win for the interviewer.

Sobchak constantly tends to talk with Navalny about the economy. "Putin does not raise taxes." Sometimes it's better to be silent

- Alexei, why don't you give interviews?
- I give it all the time, although I am very tired of answering for the thousandth time the question "why haven't you been killed yet"
- Come to us for an interview on acute fresh questions!
- I will come
- Alexei, why haven't you been killed yet?

It seems to others that Navalny did not appear in the best light in this interview.

The questions are very bad and the answers are very bad :(

By an effort of will, I forced myself to watch the Sobchak-Navalny interview to the middle. I'll watch the other half tomorrow. This is an example of how not to interview. And, probably, how not to give it. Navalny needed to break down a meaningless, ragged, ill-prepared and incompetent conversation. And he followed him. And he responded badly.

I started today, what I did not finish watching last night. And paused again. Impossible. How not to take an interview and how not to go to an interview and give it. She annoyed him immediately, from the first minute. He was already on the screw. Very bad interview. Mutually, on both sides

After the verdict and the day spent in the Kirov pre-trial detention center, Alexei Navalny gave the first big interview - to Ksenia Sobchak on the Dozhd TV channel. Navalny already spoke as if in a different status - a major federal politician - today he is riveted a lot of attention, and the interview caused a great resonance.

Ksenia Sobchak told Citiboom about her own impressions of this conversation.

- You asked Alexei Navalny quite tough questions. How satisfied were you with his answers?

- It's not for me to judge. We need to see what those who watched the interview say, how satisfied they are with these answers. But speaking from a distance, after the interview, I think that Alexei is now in a stressful situation, and I understand that it is easy for us to talk about how a person can feel who can go to prison for five years from week to week. But at the same time, I think that, as in the book that I gave him on the program (“Dragon” by Schwartz), the biggest victory of crooks and thieves over Navalny will be if they manage to embitter, harden him. A person who is broken by anger and aggression can become the second Putin, and in this case, nothing will change for those people who want real change. I would like to wish Alexei to cope with his understandable feelings and emotions and remain in history an enlightened person who was able to overcome his fears (he already succeeded), and his anger, and his completely human desire to take revenge.

- On Twitter, you gave a link to a post by film critic Yuri Bogomolov, where, among other things, he said that Navalny is at a crossroads: he can defeat the system, but lose himself, as happened with Solzhenitsyn and Yeltsin. What does this choice mean?

- When a person is under such pressure, when he is threatened with a sentence, when he is being persecuted, he becomes hardened, embittered and wants to take revenge. It is categorically impossible to do this, this is the collapse of everything for which we are all fighting. I hope that Alexei, like me, is struggling with an impersonal system that does not allow a person in our country to live and develop freely. If he fights his personal enemies - Putin, Yakunin, anyone else - then this fight will not bring victory to anyone.

Well, if he defeats Putin, he himself will become Putin 2.0. Neither he nor all of us will benefit from this. It seems to me that truly noble, honest people who went out to Bolotnaya Square a year ago to protect, first of all, their human dignity, are fighting an impersonal system, having no sentiments, either positive or negative, neither towards Putin, nor towards Sechin, nor to someone else from this system. I really don’t like all these jokes about “Putin is Botox”, posts where Sobyanin is exposed as Putin’s wife, I think that this is off topic and off topic. You need to grow out of the age of mutual insults and cruelty and understand that you can truly destroy the system only by destroying its mechanisms, remaining impartial and condemning exclusively political decisions, and nothing else.

- And which of these groups is Navalny closer to?

- Differently. Now he manifests himself differently. This is understandable, because he is trying to gather everyone around him in order to get the necessary support - nationalists, liberals, and others. But, on the other hand, we again do not know to whom he is really closer. And will it not turn out that with all this stress, Navalny will make a choice in the direction of toughening, especially since this choice is very tempting: the crowd will always choose the most aggressive and tough. This is how people are arranged, the crowd will always choose the one who will play along with its lowest feelings. There is a great danger here. For me, the great figures of history were those who did not follow, but led the crowd behind them - they promoted their policies regardless of the mood in society. Remember the great Margaret Thatcher. Or Churchill, some of his beliefs were also not at all close to the British, but he pushed through them and was able to convince the whole country that he was right. I would very much like Aleksey to convince the country of the rightness of the path of noble confrontation, without insults, without revenge, without aggression, albeit complicated and longer, but necessary for gaining real statehood.

- Has Navalny changed lately?

- Probably, it changes, because the situation changes. It is easy for us to reason about what it is. But how it really is, we can not know. It seems to me that he is getting tougher, but this is a temporary story associated with stress. I would really not want him to become a defender of marginal gopniks, whom he turns on with his aggression. I want to see in him a leader of people who are confident in their position, thinking, intelligent, and people who oppose this ferocious aggression.

- Do you feel today, in particular, in connection with Navalny, the moral dilemma of choosing between professional duty and your civic feeling?

- Yes, of course, I always feel it. But now I have another dilemma. I support what Alexey Navalny is doing, I like his activities and the ideas for which we took to the streets a year ago, but I do not want to maintain the level of aggression and the energy of radicalism that we have now. I don't like the idea of ​​"demolish everything", "reset everyone", "not a single United Russia member will remain in power." This is some kind of Bolshevism. I believe that people should work or not work in politics on professional grounds, and not on the basis of the fact that they are United Russia or not United Russia. How is this different from today's situation?

It scares me when Navalny says: "I'll put Putin in jail." How is he then different from Putin, who is now imprisoning Navalny? I don't like it, of course. Many today say that the former members of the "United Russia" under the future government will not get the opportunity to work, it scares me. How does this differ from today's situation, when no one, except members of United Russia, can work. It turns out that we are changing one order to another, exactly the same. And I want there to be an open discussion, a pluralism of opinions, including that the members of United Russia prove their case, if they are really convinced United Russia. And if, among other things, they are professionals, why shouldn't they work effectively for the benefit of the state? I also believe that having some contacts with the current government is not the greatest evil and sin.

For me, Mikhail Prokhorov, who is undoubtedly in contact with the president, is not a crossed out figure. I always look at business and politics. I may not like his other actions, for example, the fact that he did not create his own party immediately after the presidential election, or that now he has not nominated anyone for mayor in his place. But I judge precisely by these cases, and not by the one with whom he communicates. We are not fighting for a particular person to come to power, but for changing the system as a whole. The main thing is that there are changes, and who will introduce them, whether Medvedev, whether Prokhorov, whether Navalny, whether Kudrin, it does not matter to me at all. I would support anyone who would undertake to conduct them, even if he was Putin's closest ally in the past. The main thing is that the changes are real.

- Is Navalny a radical politician?

- I judge by actions, and so far Navalny has not done anything for which he could be called radical. He hasn't crossed that line yet.

- Will Navalny be the mayor of Moscow?

I don't think so, unfortunately.

Visiting Ksenia Sobchak is politician, Russian presidential candidate Alexei Navalny, who answered questions about his political program, the problem of Crimea, Chechnya, taxes, abortion, LGBT marriages and much more. He told if he was afraid of the collapse of the system during the change of power, why he did not think about the possibility of becoming a victim of a political assassination, and how he felt about Vladimir Putin.

Alexei Navalny believes that " simple solution there is no Crimean problem”, a second referendum should be held on the peninsula. The oppositionist does not recognize the first referendum, the second, in his opinion, the world does not recognize either, but it is important to give people the opportunity to express their will. Navalny does not believe that the problems of Donbass are connected with Crimea, in order to solve them, it is necessary to fulfill the Russian part of the Minsk agreements, withdraw troops and hand over the border, which is what the oppositionist is going to do if he becomes president.

Navalny is also going to equalize subsidies to the regions, despite the difficulties in some of them. So, speaking of Chechnya, the country pays "colossal money, but does not receive either peace or the absence of terrorist attacks and militants." In matters of the economy, the oppositionist among his main tasks puts the reduction of the part controlled by the state, as this blocks its development. In addition, Navalny opposes the ban on abortion, is going to issue permits for short-barreled weapons, sees no problems in legalizing LGBT marriages, but believes that this should be decided by referenda in each subject of the federation.

What will happen to the system if he comes to power? Alexei does not believe that the change of the system will lead to collapse, as in 1991, since then the price of oil fell, and now the country receives "a lot of money." Navalny believes that at this stage, his admission or non-admission to the presidential elections in 2018 no longer depends on Putin, but on whether he can unite enough people to “put pressure on the authorities and force” them to allow him.

Full transcript of the program:

Glad you're in the studio. Today we have an open broadcast, live broadcast, I hope that we will have an interesting conversation with you. Alexey, the first question is related to the complex process of arranging this interview. Not only to me, but to many other journalists, for several months you have been refusing any communication, always answering the same thing: if you want to know something, see the blog. What is the reason for this position? Why did you suddenly...?

Ksenia, do you want me to reveal all the secrets of our agreements? “I'm in Bali and I can't. I went to Bhutan, I can't." When you have two days in a month to interview, they sometimes get to some of my events, especially since I now travel to the regions almost all day long. I will return home now, I will literally take a bag and go to Perm, from Perm I will go to Izhevsk. I have an election campaign, which means that I am quite busy in terms of schedule.

But for many journalists, if they are willing to show some interest in my campaign, they can go to these cities and interview me. We have now opened 44 headquarters to date. This means that I myself was present at the opening of probably 35 or 36 headquarters, and in every place, in every city I gave a press conference, gave several individual interviews. And in this sense, I try to ensure that we meet the standard of the most transparent election campaign, and I communicate with journalists as much as I can.

But I just have a feeling, I’m not talking only about myself, although if we really restore those events, exactly in the week when all the events took place ...

When did you go to Bhutan and couldn't interview me?

No, when you wrote Vaino's letter to those hot events. You somehow got off the radar and it was impossible to reach you. And it is clear that a little later it was possible to arrange an interview, because, accordingly, the situation began to change, and those events began to be forgotten. But it was strange that you, not only to me, but to many journalists at that time - a period when this letter really raised a lot of questions - for some reason you for some time ...

I would like the journalistic community to somehow act together, because it was a hot time, I needed to have an operation on my eye, I did it, so I could not give interviews. Then, as soon as I returned and recovered, I traveled around the regions. Since then, I repeat, I have given several press conferences and given several individual interviews. If you came for me to Saransk, Voronezh or somewhere...

I hope, by the way, that I will have such an opportunity, I already told you over the air, I will go with pleasure. But, despite the fact that at the moment this is probably not the most relevant topic, but in order to finish it, I would still like to get an explanation. I know that a huge number of your zealous fans were surprised, shocked by this letter and these ...

What letter?

Vaino about leaving. In general, this is such a topic, let’s say, on the one hand, I understand that we all live in a certain reality in which connections with the presidential administration are needed, and on the other hand, when a person who personifies this “do not believe, do not be afraid, don’t ask,” writes such a letter, even on a respectful and understandable occasion, of course, for many people this immediately causes new wave all that Navalny is working with the administration and so on.

Now we will explain everything to everyone. The peculiarity of my activity is that I and the Anti-Corruption Foundation write letters all day long. I write them to Chaika, I write them to Bastrykin, I write them to Putin, because we are investigating corruption, and we deal with formal letters all day long.

But not with personal requests.

I didn't have any personal request. These are two different things. For many years, they completely illegally did not give me a passport, they did not give it. I sued twice, my complaint is in the European Court of Human Rights, and all that I did in this sense, without seeing any of these people, in particular, I never saw Vaino in the eye, I wrote a letter that I demand so that they give me a passport, because I need to go to have an operation. And I pointed out that my complaint is in the ECHR, they do not illegally extradite me. According to the laws Russian Federation I was supposed to be given this passport and they gave it to me. I don’t know why, what worked inside the presidential administration, but this is definitely not the situation when I made some personal request, and they did something to me as an exception. My legal rights, which had been violated for many years, were simply restored.

Vaino does not deal with passports. We all understand that he is Putin's confidant, a person very close to the president. We all understand that this is a person, that is, you are practically writing to Putin, and it is clear that these issues are resolved conceptually.

I understand perfectly well that they did not give me a passport conceptually for many years, because they did not want to give it.

And was it worth it conceptually to ask him? Have you weighed the risks?

No, I requested. What are the risks? There are no risks. I, once again, I demanded this passport.

Alexey, you are a very cautious politician. You know how everything can always be used against you. Didn't you understand that they, of course, would publish this letter?

Ksenia, many things can be used against me, including this interview. I'm talking to the famous liberal Sobchak, and they're all terrible.

Are you not a liberal?

I'm just talking about what can be said. Any thing can be perverted. Demanding the exercise of one's rights is not a request. I demanded that they give me a passport. I was given it.

But you didn't write to the passport office, Alexei, you wrote to Vaino.

I wrote to the passport office. Once again, when I demand that Medvedev be fired and investigated for corruption, I write to Putin, and to the Investigative Committee, and to the Prosecutor General's Office, and wherever. And here I filed an official complaint with the court, the European Court, took the application to the migration center.

And at the same time he wrote to Putin according to the concept.

And at the same time I wrote to the Commissioner for Human Rights, and he already asked me to write to Vaino. I sent an email with the same content that I was attacked, I demand to stop violating my rights and give me my passport, and they gave it to me. Maybe they'll take it away tomorrow, I don't know.

I was just surprised by this precisely from the point of view of the fact that you are a very cautious person in general, and this is such an obvious thing. Do you regret it now?

Of course not. This has nothing to do with the fact that I am a cautious person. It seems to me that this is some kind of strange epithet, I am a normal person, I am a prudent person, I know what is due to me by law, I demand it. Nothing has happened here that is a deviation from my principles.

Did you have any informal meetings with someone from the presidential administration, with Vaino or with anyone?

I have never seen any of them in my life. I saw that Fedotov, who is the commissioner for human rights, can be considered, he is also formally an employee of the administration. I saw him, met him on the radio, I met him, and of those who are officials of the presidential administration, I have never seen them.

We'll talk about this later. Let's get back...

... talked.

What?

Sorry. We haven't talked enough now.

No, enough about the situation with the passport, but about the situation of who you communicate with and where, I would like to return to this, if you don't mind.

Very interesting.

But now I would like to talk in general about your fans and your fans' strategy to protect you. It seems to me that this strategy is still connected with your position.

Well, explain to me, please, what are my fans?

Look, there are people who support you unconditionally, and this is what, probably, any politician calls the nuclear electorate. This is a normal political science story, when a person has it, for a rock star it would be fans, for a politician Alexei Navalny it is his nuclear voters who vote for Alexei Navalny regardless of anything. Such people are the core of your electorate, you cannot but know about it.

Then there is a more complicated story of people who can sometimes vote for you, sometimes they can’t, you can disappoint them, upset them, you won’t say the same about Crimea or about gays, and now their position has already begun to fluctuate a little. Here Akunin wrote something, here he somehow expressed himself. I want to talk about this core. Look, these people are different, those who do not like them call them Navalny, Navalny's minions and other offensive words, I would not want to call them that, I will call them the core of the electorate.

You have already repeated all this nonsense. Let me stop you right now, shall we? There is no such nuclear electorate. And this whole, as you say, political science story, that's why I call on all political scientists, of course, to throw them into a cage with wild animals in the zoo, because you repeat a set of some clichés: people are ready to vote for you, regardless of how you change your views. Of course not, I have people who are probably my faithful supporters, and I, in turn, am their reliable political partner, but they support me for a set of political demands. If I stop fighting corruption tomorrow, of course, they won't vote for me.

This is what I would like to come to. Look, there is a certain trend that scares not only me, but many people, who at the same time are people who support you, that as soon as any thinking person, be it me or some kind of writer, or a creative person, or just .. .

Who? For example, who?

For example, Akunin or, for example, Bykov, or someone else. As soon as this person writes something, not even necessarily critical, but something, in general, some kind of reflection ...

Yes, Bykov did not write anything or Akunin did not write anything, they did not write anything.

Well, Akunin at one time or Lev Shlosberg also wrote something.

I argued with these people, please excuse me.

Wait a second. Under these posts, a huge number of accusations immediately appear that all this is paid for by the Kremlin, any criticism of Alexei Navalny means that the Murzilki immediately went into battle, and so on. To be honest, this worries me. There is Lev Shlosberg, he spoke, you ask for a specific example, I will say, he spoke about your program. A person whom many respect and, in general, many consider a worthy person. He said some impartial words about you, I can quote them.

Cite.

Let me quote you now: “He is not a democrat or a liberal, he is simply trying to accumulate any protest electorate of any kind - from nationalists to communists, from liberals to yesterday's supporters of United Russia, the Liberal Democratic Party, Zyuganov, anyone. No economic program or political reforms are needed,” Schlosberg said. You can now look at this speech of his in a conversation with a journalist from Ekho Moskvy right there on the Ekho Moskvy website, either some thoughtful comments, or directly accusations from your nuclear electorate that he is a Murzilka, that this is paid for by the Kremlin interview, and immediately instead of some kind of constructive discussion of these words, some very tough story of such attacks. Why is this happening and what can you answer Lev Shlosberg?

People have their own opinion. I am absolutely fine with criticism, I enter into a discussion with all people. As you can see, I am with you for an interview and I am ready to answer all your sharp and uncomfortable questions. And, I repeat, I try to be one of the most accessible politicians for the press. At every meeting in every city, I answer absolutely all questions. Raise your hand - I answer, raise your hand - I answer.

There are many questions that politicians don't always want to answer, but I answer them anyway. There are people who appreciate it, there are people who support me, and they have their own opinion. When Schlossberg, whom I have a good relationship with, says what you repeated, I, along with the people in the commentary, can come and write: “You said stupidity, Schlosberg.” He just said really, objectively, as I think, stupidity.

Let's go through this nonsense.

Let's go, let's go.

He accuses you specifically of not having an economic program, in general, of not having an understandable platform. Let's go through it in order. Actually, for example, health care costs should double, in your opinion, in order to provide the required level of medical services. Why double, why not 20%, not 40%? Have you done economic research on this topic?

Xenia, have you read my program?

I watched it, yes of course. This is from your site.

Have you read or watched it? From our site. Both on our website and in my speeches, I point out everywhere that we must double the funding for healthcare and approximately double the funding for education, based on ...

Why at two, why not at four?

I answer you. Because there are countries of the Economic Cooperation Organization. That is, roughly speaking, there are rich countries, and when we look at how much these rich countries spend as a percentage of GDP on healthcare and education, we see that our healthcare and education are underfunded.

Do you know how much Russia currently spends as a percentage of GDP on healthcare?

I know, Ksenia, that's it, I'm good with numbers.

How?

It's the same question: the consolidated budget, the federal budget. We're leaving now...

How much, wait, from Russia's consolidated GDP?

Consolidated federal budget. Tell me how much. We're talking about specific numbers.

Consolidated or federal?

Consolidated how much of GDP?

Xenia, let's do it again. We are now talking about the specific provisions of my program, and these specific provisions of my program grow from the experience of developed countries. This experience of developed countries suggests that education, healthcare...

Wait, Alexey, I'll tell you this figure now, and you just remember it, because you are engaged in ...

Tell me a number. I know her. Because what you are doing now, trying to catch me on some figure, suggests that, in principle, unfortunately, you do not understand how the budget works, how the federal budget differs from the consolidated one. Tell me how is it different?

Wait, but there is a GDP figure for health care. That is, you say that it needs to be doubled. I am talking about this and asking you, in this sense, I am not a politician and, of course, I was specially preparing just for our broadcast, but it seems to me that if you say that you want to raise it twice, you must know. This is 3.6% of GDP currently spent on healthcare. It seems to me that if you propose to raise it, you should know it.

Of course I know her.

What, for example, is an indicator of success in the field of healthcare for you?

The indicator of success in health care is, of course, life expectancy, the detection of diseases, in general, people's satisfaction with the services provided, a set of various criteria and indicators that show all this. But the most important thing, which we talk about in the program, is that it is impossible in principle to achieve anything if healthcare is underfunded in principle. Therefore, we need to give more money there and continue to carry out reforms inside. If we now pay a salary of 14,000 rubles, 8,000 rubles to a doctor, then nothing will work, no reform will work. That is why we say that the military-police budget needs to be reduced, and health care spending, in particular, increased.

Look, many experts, when discussing how to develop the Russian economy and how to build its budget, are just saying that social spending in Russia is greatly inflated.

What experts say this?

Quite a lot of experts.

What experts? Call me, tell me.

When we were preparing for this program, we talked to a number of people.

Ksenia, that's the point, it's from the series: tell me the percentage. Call me an expert. There are no such experts.

There is, for example, me now, Ovchan, Kudrin, Oreshkin.

Who's first?

Ovchan.

Movchan you probably mean.

Morchan, yes.

Morchan, Ovchan or Movchan?

Once again I say: Movchan.

Movchan. There is one, but Kudrin, for example, your favorite, says that we really need to increase spending on healthcare and education. He simply suggests a 1.6x increase.

But Kudrin says that we still have an inflated social budget.

He doesn't say it. It is not inflated with us, that's the point, it is not inflated at all. Our military-police budget is inflated. Russia, despite the fact that it claims to be a social state, is a military-police state, and our military-police part of the budget has eaten absolutely everything.

Okay, but at the same time, in your own program, which I read on your website, you write that police officers should receive a decent salary. On the one hand, you are proposing to take away this budget from them, do I understand you correctly, are you talking about this now?

No, you misunderstand me. I will explain everything to you now. We have a really gigantic military-police budget. The share of direct wage costs is quite low there. A huge amount of money is simply stolen there. In particular, in the state order, and these are not my words, but the words of the Accounts Chamber, that every fourth ruble is almost immediately cashed there. We can, by cutting the military-police budget, raise the share of wages and pay even a little more, but at the same time transfer part of the costs of healthcare and education, to investments in human capital.

We understand the platform of "Yabloko" or the Communist Party. You may like it or not, but this is some kind of big ...

Describe her, please. You don't understand anything. You do not understand either the Yabloko platform or the Communist Party platform. Why did I say Schlosberg.

No, wait, why?

Let me finish, an important thought. Why did I say that Schlosberg declared stupidity when he said that I have no economic program? Because there is, unfortunately, a part of people who continue to exploit something from 1989 or 1990. Once upon a time, Yabloko had the 500 Days program, I am a former member of the Yabloko party, I also liked it, and therefore they have an economic program, they have some economists. And something we know about the Communist Party. In fact, we do not know anything about them, and they have absolutely no program. What we propose is just a program based on concrete figures.

No, let's do this: can you say for sure about their program that it is leftist? Can it be said?

The Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the Communists have a left-wing program.

No. She is leftist in a social sense.

progressive tax. Yes, of course, she absolutely in this sense ...

It is leftist in the social sense, but from the point of view of the socio-political, it is, of course, a right-wing conservative program. What is the left program?

How is she conservative?

The role of the church, the role of the state - of course, this is a right-wing conservative program.

Good. Where are you, I just want to understand, where are you on this flank? Because I read your program, many things are clear to me, many, unfortunately, for me, including, but this is probably because I do not understand anything, they sound like toasts. But you understand that these are some slogans. I want to understand: who are you - are you right, are you left? Can you somehow identify yourself?

In Russian political science, practical politics, there is no right or left. You say: right, left, implying, apparently, that "Yabloko" is right, and the communists are left? Moreover, Yabloko, of course, is not a right-wing party, it is a left-liberal party. Liberals should generally be on the left. Communists, our domestic communists, they have left, I don't know what's left. They talk about free education and healthcare.

Okay, don't talk about them. Where are you in this, conditionally, political science line?

So there is no political science line, it does not exist in Russia.

How does it not exist? That is, it exists all over the world, but we again have a certain special state.

In the world exists, it is possible to distinguish Republicans from Democrats in the USA by a set of questions of some kind. It is possible to distinguish a Christian Democrat from a Social Democrat in Europe, but absolutely not in Russia. In Russia, there are parties controlled by the Kremlin, and there are independent ones, that's all.

You are independent, we, thank God, have decided on this. Tell us about yourself so we can understand. You say you can't decide on the line. But the basic question is: who are you? Do you criticize the authorities from the right, from the left? In what way are you a left-wing liberal, in what way are you a right-wing conservative? Describe. Let's go in order.

It is not subject to any description, it is not necessary.

Good. What should be the retirement age? Do we really need to change in Russia, to raise the retirement age?

I believe that at present there is no need to raise the retirement age - this is the first. Second: in fact, this is impossible, because people by the retirement age are already 30% disabled. If we raise the retirement age, they will apply for disability even more. And most importantly, they simply do not survive. Our men do not live to retirement age. Pension fund problem...

Which one then average age do we have men in Russia?

Average life expectancy?

Average life expectancy.

Depending on regions. But the actual life expectancy of men is less than 65 years, of course. They just won't make it to retirement. And the problem of the Pension Fund is not being solved by raising the retirement age, but by taking money where it is: from oil and gas companies, they do not pay extra taxes, they do not pay extra dividends. From there you need to take.

This is what the communists say, at this particular point it is the absolute communist agenda to take and divide.

How to take it and share it?

How? They say the same. Now, in fact, we need to take this money and spend it on education.

It's good that you invited me to this interview. Now we are all your stamps that are in your head, we are now eliminating them.

Let's have fun.

This is not to be taken and divided, this is a normal taxation system that exists in all countries.

That is 70% taxes?

What 70? Where did you get 70% from?

Don't know. How much in order to be enough for pensioners, who every year more and more?

If you look at how many dividends Rosneft pays per barrel of oil, you will see that this is ridiculous money. For example, Bashneft, before it was taken over by Rosneft, paid much higher. Our oilmen are underpaying money to the budget, underpaying dividends.

Do I understand correctly that this money will be enough for the pensioners of the whole country according to Alexei Navalny?

The money from the correct, fair taxation of the raw materials sector will be enough to provide for the Pension Fund without raising the retirement age, there is no need for this.

May I ask you now? I answered your question, where did you place me: to the right or to the left?

Now, of course, to the left.

Why to the left? Normal taxation.

For this position. No, wait, tax increases. Let's do this: from today's starting point, people who are in favor of raising taxes in principle are always on the left flank. We're talking about today's point.

First, I have just mentioned the increase in dividends. And the people who are in favor of paying more dividends, are they on the right in your terminology?

Let's try today, I would like to dedicate our interview to this, because I really find it very interesting, I am also your potential voter - identification, where is Alexei Navalny? I studied political science, consider that this is important to me personally. Let's go to foreign policy.

And I think that you studied political science, put everything out of your head, you studied it in vain, you should have taken some other course.

Good. We'll talk about that later. See, in due time...

No, Ksenia, I will be happy to answer specific questions for you. I'm glad you asked. But this whole line is political science, it is not applicable in Russia.

I don't agree with this. I think it applies, and, in general, I understand, voting for the communists, that they are always left, always for raising taxes.

Is United Russia left or right?

Centrist today. This is the center party today.

Centrist relative to whom? Why? She similarly opposes raising the retirement age.

Listen, let's do this: I'm not going to become president yet, I'm interested in studying you, really. Let's move on to foreign policy. At one time in 2008, you called for the recognition of the independence of Abkhazia and Ossetia. Right, was it?

Transnistria.

And Transnistria, and Abkhazia, and Ossetia. If you want, I can quote, but it’s enough for me that ...

Yes Yes Yes. Of course, it was the manifesto of the movement "People", I believed that independence should be recognized.

Yes, you wanted to recognize independence. At the same time, in general, when in Crimea Putin did what you, in general, called for in Abkhazia and Ossetia, you were initially against it. You even suggested launching cruise missiles at the General Staff, remember that.

It was not about Crimea, it was probably about Georgia, of course.

You yourself answered your own question by saying the phrase: for some reason the situation was different. Because the situation was different. Abkhazia and South Ossetia are regions that initially, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, announced their withdrawal, there were bloody events in Tskhinvali and Sukhumi. There was actually a war.

Do you know the history of Crimea?

So what?

And I, as far as I know the history of Crimea, neither in the 90s nor in the 2000s there was any real violence. Therefore, these are incomparable things.

Yuri Meshkov - do you know such a person?

President of Crimea

Who announced that Crimea is part of Russia.

In the 90s. How? This happened in the 90s. He was elected by the people of Crimea. I'm talking about the same processes as in Ossetia.

Yes, not the same ones. Yes, it is impossible to compare Abkhazia, where the war was going on, and which was actually independent of Georgia for many, many years, and is now independent. It is impossible to compare Pridnestrovie, which, in fact, has been independent of Moldova for many, many years. It is impossible to compare with Crimea and Ukraine. All these events...

Look, it's good that there was no war in Crimea, but there was also the same process when they wanted to, in general, speak out for their independence.

Process and war are different things. Process and actual independence are two different things. Therefore, we can discuss all this, and we will discuss, I just urge you to do something that cannot be compared and separated by commas: Abkhazia, Ossetia, Crimea, Transnistria are different situations are completely different.

Good. On the one hand, you are saying that Crimea will never become part of Ukraine in the foreseeable future, and now you are saying that, in principle, a second referendum should be held. In this regard, I would like to ask: do you seriously think that Ukraine will allow this second referendum if Crimea is annexed? How do you imagine it?

I don't say it from one side and the other. I'm talking all on the same side. I'm speaking realistically. I know that many in Ukraine do not like my words, many in Russia do not like my words, but I tell it like it is. Realistically, we see that in the foreseeable future, of course, Crimea will not be recognized by anyone, but in fact will remain part of the Russian Federation.

And what to do?

What can we do here? What should any fine, any president do? He must announce another normal, or rather, not another, but the first normal honest referendum, which Ukraine, of course, will not recognize with a high degree of probability, we understand this.

What for?

Because it needs to be done.

But if Ukraine doesn't recognize it anyway, let's hold it at least four times.

Here the question is not in Ukraine and not in Russia, but the question is in the real expression of the will of the inhabitants of Crimea, which should be determined in reality, and not in the way it was.

That is, now you do not trust the inhabitants of Crimea?

I trust the residents.

referendum.

And the referendum that took place was, of course, an obvious fake. We need to hold a normal referendum - that's the first thing. And the second, and I'm absolutely honest too...

Wait. And why, if no one recognizes it, what's the point? Just to soothe their own conscience, that people actually lowered their ballots?

This is not called calming one's own conscience, but this is called fixing the real will of people. They are real people, I, unlike you, believe that we should know their real opinion, that they should come and vote in a real referendum, and we will see the results.

What will it change? Ukraine does not recognize this. What will happen next?

Excellent. We have the same discussion regarding Putin: why do we need these elections, this will not change anything, he has 84%. This is from the same series.

Lesh, do not translate the topic. And what about Putin? Are we returning Crimea or not?

What kind of strange, impossible statement of the question is this? Once again, I answered this question. First, there is no easy solution. Second: apparently, there is no solution at all, just as there has not been a solution to a single territorial conflict on planet Earth in recent years. Name me a conflict that was resolved successfully. There are none, no. Even among civilized countries, there is practically no precedent when a territorial conflict would be resolved, and here it will not be resolved in the foreseeable future.

Look, I'll tell you honestly. I can just have you...

I hope you will speak honestly to me.

I want to understand: you are a smart politician, already very experienced. You yourself understand that in politics, especially when we are talking about millions of voters who have to vote, regardless, right, left, center, side, the clear position always wins, understandable to people. Now they are watching you...

Did they teach you at MGIMO, Ksenia?

No. Some simple voter is looking at you without higher education, and you have now said a lot of words about Crimea, but for or against, it has not become particularly clear to anyone. It turns out Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, your competitor, and he, everything is clear with him. He says: “I am for Crimea, this is my main victory, and in general I even want elections on the day of the annexation of Crimea, because this is the main achievement of my president.” The late Nemtsov came out, who also immediately gave a very simple answer to this question, I remember this well.

This is not true.

But I can also give you many quotes from him when he said that Crimea should be returned to Ukraine. Also, many people did not like him for this, but he said this, but let me bring the editor to you now, I personally read these interviews and remember this. Do you have any clear, unambiguous position?

Who told you this? At MGIMO, at the Faculty of Political Science, you were taught everything wrong. You think people are stupid. What you just said, you are saying: "Any person, he understands absolutely nothing." There are things that cannot be said simply "yes" or simply "no". There are complex things, well, that means I am such a politician. I am the kind of politician who tells it like it is. I am telling the honest truth that there is no simple solution to the Crimean problem. No, he is not.

Good. Let's then, since you understand this better, and political science is nonsense, let's talk about Ukraine. Donbass. How can we generally resolve this problem if we do not return Crimea? How do you imagine that?

These are unrelated issues.

Donbass and Crimea - unrelated problems?

What is the problem of Donbass? There is a war going on there, and in order to resolve the problem of Donbass and the eastern part of Ukraine, you need to do what was signed by your well-known acquaintance, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, to start by fulfilling the Minsk agreements, this is what needs to be done.

And how will we get closer to the world until this is done?

We are not getting closer, and it is impossible to get closer to him, with a significant part of the world ...

But without the return of Crimea, this is impossible, without support in the Donbass and without the return of Crimea.

Good. Let's mix Northern Cyprus and the Falkland Islands here now, and link the problem of them all. It is not so in fact.

Sorry, it’s my editor who’s telling me right now: “If I were president, then Crimea would become Ukrainian,” Boris Nemtsov said on the air of the Inter TV channel, just to end our conversation.

On the air of the Ukrainian channel. On air Russian channel Borya said different things. No matter. I'm not here to discuss Nemtsov, but to talk about my position. As I have already said, the problem of Crimea has no solution in the foreseeable future, it will not be recognized as part of Russia by many countries.

It's clear. How will you negotiate with ungoverned Ukraine, how will you negotiate with Europe without giving up Crimea? Here you are president tomorrow - how?

But certainly not by the methods of wonderful video messages from the Dozhd TV channel to President Poroshenko. I will do what Putin...

Listen, what are you talking about me again, we are talking about you. You are going to be president, not me.

But I try to say something that you understand and know.

So tell me how. You are trying to offend me now, and I am trying to sincerely get to know your program.

No. If it seemed that way to you, I apologize, Xenia. I will fulfill the Minsk agreements. The world demands them to be fulfilled from us, Ukraine demands them to be fulfilled, they are also to be fulfilled...

Ukraine does not comply with them. How will you complete them?

I will fulfill the Russian part of the Minsk agreements, transfer control over the border. I will fulfill the Minsk agreements.

What does it consist of, the Russian part of the Minsk agreements?

First of all, the withdrawal of troops and the transfer of border control ...

Are our troops there?

Of course, our troops are there. Of course, there are armed groups that support Russia directly, this has been repeatedly recognized, including by the leaders of these unrecognized republics. They openly say that without Russian support, without Russian troops, they cannot fight. What do you think, tell me, please, Ksenia, who pays pensions there now? Who pays salaries there?

No, we are now… Russia, of course.

Of course, KAMAZ trucks leave with money.

No, we are talking about formulations simply.

There are Minsk agreements, they were signed - the first and second. They need to be fulfilled, and this is where to start. And this, I hope, will begin the normalization of relations with Ukraine. But at the same time, you need to understand that perhaps this is the main crime that Putin committed against the future of Russia - that we have found in Ukraine a hostile state, just a hostile state, where there are 40 million people who are hostile to Russia and will treat us like this for years to come.

That's the point. What to do then with those people who experienced great difficulties and, in general, they still experience these difficulties in the Donbass? How to be with them? They are now there, they support what is happening there now, they do not want to go to Ukraine. What to do with them? They believe in their Russian world and want it to take place.

There different people there is.

But there are definitely such people, you see.

Of course, there are, there are different people. It is necessary to say that some of them, most of them, so that they are not subjected, all of them are not subjected to some kind of illegal repression. So that there is some kind of amnesty, so that they have guarantees.

Will you stop the nationalists?

What nationalists?

Which are in Ukraine, the so-called national battalions.

The implementation of the Minsk agreements is not such a thing, what we did tomorrow, and they were fulfilled. Naturally, there must be international control, there must be an international peacekeeping contingent, mechanisms are needed that will make it possible to avoid massacres and revenge on both sides. And, in general, this happens quite often in international conflicts. There are blue helmets for this, there are European troops, various types of formations exist, and humanity has quite a lot of experience in applying such measures. Therefore, I'm not talking about the fact that I signed the Minsk agreements - heaven on earth has come. A complex procedure will begin, everyone will violate the truce, everyone will blame each other, there will be propaganda. War is war, but nevertheless, this process can only be started by implementing the Minsk agreements.

We have already discussed foreign policy. Everything turned out to be quite easy there, to fulfill the Minsk agreements, that's all.

Everything is very difficult, just that it was very difficult.

But it's very easy of you.

No, I said that it's all very, very difficult, unfortunately.

Good. Let's get back to domestic politics, there are also a lot of interesting things. For example, you write that “Russia needs a visa regime with Central Asia and the countries of the Caucasus. Labor migrants should come on work visas, and not uncontrolled, as they are now” - also from your website. “Exactly at 7:00 chuchmeks (this is your quote) just with some kind of hellish roar they beat with sledgehammers on some pieces of iron, they go in circles over tea in a mug.” Probably, many of your electorate will agree with the definition of "chuchmeki", but for a person who claims to be the president of Russia, these are words that should remain somewhere in the distant past. Do you now understand that it was harsh and, probably, too emotional?

What year is this post? This post, as far as I remember, is quoted to me quite often in questions of this kind, I think, 2005-2007, and it concerned the fact that some people bang on my door and do not let me sleep. Of course, this is a thing of the past. Perhaps this is the word...

But do you still support the visa regime?

Of course, absolutely 100% yes, Russia needs a visa regime with the countries of Central Asia and the Caucasus - this is the most important point of our program.

Listen, but your position on Chechnya is also known, on this…

Well, tell me, what is my known position?

Well, how? You have spoken out many times, I don’t know if this position has changed or not, but from what I remember, you spoke about the need to stop these uncontrolled subsidies, to stop such a huge flow of money to the region. And, in general, your critics said that, yes, people probably like it, from the point of view of populism, of course, everyone likes this idea - not to give extra money. But from the point of view of real politics, in fact, this is the relationship of any center of the empire with its such vassal outskirts, because with this money we seem to be covering up conflicts that could be in Moscow.

And tell me, please, why don't we pray for anything in Magadan or in the Smolensk region, or in the Kursk region?

More peaceful regions, we have not been at war, as with Chechnya, for so many centuries.

Excellent. That is, let's give money even where we are being blackmailed, and in general it is not yet clear who, it is not clear who is at war with, we will give uncontrollably. Excuse me, I will resolutely object to you here. There is no populism here, there is a sober, pragmatic calculation and the requirement to comply with the law. I really think that money should be distributed more evenly between the constituent entities of the Russian Federation. Yes, of course, there are difficulties in the Caucasian republics. By the way, there are more people in Dagestan than in Chechnya now. But when I see photos of Grozny, and it looks like a wonderful city that is behind you, luminous skyscrapers, and I come to any city in the central part of Russia, and I see just destroyed buildings, potholes, to come to some Nizhny Novgorod .. .

But maybe this is the price of the absence of terrorist attacks? Aren't you afraid that tomorrow you will stop giving these subsidies to Chechnya, being president, and the day after tomorrow, in general, all these sensible guys of Ramzan Kadyrov will come here and terrorist attacks will begin in Moscow?

I want to remind you that a terrible terrorist attack has recently taken place in your native city, that terrorist attacks are constantly taking place in Chechnya. Not so long ago, we saw tanks firing at the Press House, it was recently ...

But are you willing to take those risks even more?

What are the risks? Once again, now, right now, this is a more irrelevant conversation that we allegedly bought peace of mind with huge money. Isn't it you, sorry that I again recall your appeal to various presidents, wasn't it you who appealed to President Lukashenko not to extradite a young Chechen because he would be killed or slaughtered or, I don't know what they would do with him in Chechnya. We pay colossal sums of money and receive neither calmness, nor the absence of terrorist attacks, nor normal government. So we need to stop talking about it. Stop. All this tribute that is paid, it has been paid for some unknown reason for several years now.

Okay, another question about domestic politics. Let me remind you, we determine whether Alexei Navalny's policy is right or left. For some reason, he still doesn't know.

I know everything about myself.

Well, define who you are - a right-wing liberal, I don't know, a social democrat, maybe you used to call yourself a national democrat.

Let me tell you that I am a centrist. Will it solve your problems?

The centrist is United Russia.

No, no, of course, well, they are centrists.

Putin is a centrist. That is, you are like Putin.

What kind of a centrist is he? What is Putin a centrist? Putin, again, from the point of view of the role of the church, from the point of view of his reactionary nature, is a right-wing reactionary, a person who actually creates a monarchy in Russia, a real right-wing reactionary.

He does not raise taxes, indeed, Putin's tax policy, you even talked about it in your interviews, tax reform is, in your opinion, Putin's only achievement.

Do you get paid on Rain?

I receive.

Please go to the accounting department and ask them how much taxes they have to pay on top of your salary. Huge tax burden. And the increase in taxes on truckers, and the endless increase in gasoline prices, and the endless increase in tariffs - these are all taxes. That's why they raise taxes.

Are you against tax increases?

Of course, I am against raising taxes. I think that taxes should be reduced in Russia.

Are you in favor of flat taxation?

I believe that now it is impossible to cancel it, because there will simply be more administration. In general, it does not look fair, but, for example, cancel it tomorrow - we will simply lose a large part of taxes. I am, of course, in favor of reducing the tax burden on business, I am in favor of reducing the tax burden, most importantly, on the payroll fund. The point of our program says that small business in general should be exempt from both taxes and regulation.

Are you for the denationalization of some basic ones? ...

I don't really understand what denationalization is.

We know that in Russia in recent years, a de facto process of nationalization of a huge number of enterprises has been taking place, which in one way or another become state-owned.

I understand. Of course, I am in favor of reducing the percentage of the economy that is controlled by the state. Now it is more than 85%, in practice even more through quasi-state companies. Of course, nothing can develop in Russia and nothing is developing, we see in recent years, because the state has seized everything. Everywhere there are simply some immense Rosneft, Gazproms and Rostecs, and there is practically no private business here.

That is, it can be given to private hands? Arrange, conditionally, such a second wave of privatization in Russia?

Actually. Or rather, legally. They are also private companies. Look Sechin. When you tell him: “You have a state-owned company” - “No, not a state-owned company, we have a private company here.” Of course, we must reduce the share of state ownership in the largest companies, and certainly the state must completely withdraw from competitive industries such as the oil industry, such as the banking sector.

Another important question, which divides your supporters in many ways. I would like to understand, according to Alexei Navalny, globally, is Russia still a mono-ethnic state with a majority of Russians, this mono-ethnos, or is it still a multinational state? Still, is Russia about the state of Russians or about the state of Russians, as it was back in Soviet times?

I do not really understand this question, and it seems to me that there is a lot of contrived here.

A very understandable question.

Completely incomprehensible.

Well, we have a titular nation - Russians.

We have facts that show that in Russia 85% of people describe themselves as Russians. From the point of view of various standards, including political science, excuse me, this can be considered a mono-ethnic country. Nevertheless, Russia is, of course, a multinational state, there are other large ethnic groups.

Now it's about the facts.

I acknowledge these facts.

You, Alexei Navalny, a candidate for the presidency of the Russian Federation, do you want the majority of the people of our country to feel like Russians or feel like Russians?

Most people in our country objectively feel Russian, they are Russian. This is a problem sucked from the finger, Xenia. Of course, we need to form a civil nation, we don’t need to force a Tatar to declare that he is Russian, but it’s also rather pointless and stupid to demand from Russians that they forget the word “Russian” and say: “We are Russians.” In reality, this is an unnecessary, invented construct.

Previously, in the USSR, conditionally, one could have different attitudes towards the policy of the USSR, but there was one factor that objectively united all of us.

Soviet citizens?

Yes, Soviet citizens. These citizens all knew who Pushkin was, they all grew up on the same literature. Now, if you go to Tatarstan, if you go a little further abroad, I don’t know, to Uzbekistan or somewhere else, to the CIS countries, this integrity, of course, will not exist at all.

What for? Naturally, in Uzbekistan no one knows who Pushkin is.

Do we want to leave this integrity of one cultural background inside our country, at least inside Russia?

She is. I assure you that Pushkin is taught in any school in Tatarstan or Chechnya, there is a single school curriculum, there is a single state language - Russian. And so on. It's all there, and you don't need to invent anything. Once again, all these strange things - the Ministry of National Policy, some invented things - they are not needed at all. No need to fence the garden.

In fact, there were no Soviet citizens, and we saw this in full growth in 1991, when everyone separated, and now everyone has forgotten the Russian language, no one speaks it. And when they try to tell me now that Uzbekistan is especially close to us, so let's let everyone come here without visas, this is obviously not the case. And inside Russia, of course, there is Russian culture, Russian culture, it unites us all into a single cultural code.

Russian or Russian all the same?

Russian and Russian.

Do you feel Russian?

Well, of course. I am Russian by nationality, I feel Russian, I feel like a citizen of Russia. And this is by no means included...

Can you answer me honestly? In your appeal to Alisher Usmanov, which I really liked, I even wrote that it made a strong impression on many people, you so emphatically address him by his first name, patronymic, last name, as if emphasizing each time his non-Russian origin.

And if he were Ivan Ivanovich, would I treat him differently?

It seems to me that you would rarely pronounce this phrase like this: "Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov."

Any person who is not familiar to me, who is older than me, I will address him by his first name and patronymic. And even more so for someone I don't like. I try not to be rude to him, but to speak politely, also because politeness often irritates people even more than rudeness.

The only moment, since we are talking about Alisher's appeals, they made a lot of noise, and your answers ...

You don't call him Burkhanovich now to avoid underlining?

I feel myself Russian, but at the same time Russian, for me it is important.

And it has nothing to do with it?

Look, from the point of view of this appeal of yours and the subsequent reaction, you do not regret that you did such a big investigation, cool, with facts and so on, and this fly in the ointment in the form of this strange story about rape, which he got hooked on, and it turned out, that this is really a rumor, someone said there, and the British ambassador said somewhere, but the facts and pieces of paper could not be found ...

Not somewhere he said, but he wrote on his blog. This is the first.

Do you regret mentioning this fact? Without him, it would have been a completely clean story.

In the investigation, we did not mention Usmanov's criminal record at all. In general, not a single word was said there, because we wanted not to create an additional negative connotation for him. As for the whole subsequent history, well, of course, I told everything that I know about his biography, including this fact. And I draw your attention to the fact that in the court decision that Usmanov squeezed out of the Russian judicial system, they did not touch this point.

Returning to the agenda, now we will understand for sure whether you are left or right. Many people say that all these anti-gay laws are a huge trap for any person who comes to power next, because it is much more difficult to repeal such laws than they are invented. We have a large core of conservative electorate, family people, homophobic people, let's put it this way. and any president, even sincerely sympathetic or not in any way related to this group of citizens, will have problems canceling it all.

This is not true. You probably don't remember, but even when I was still entering law school, there was an article in the Criminal Code "Homosexuality". Nevertheless, it was canceled without any problems at all, no one even noticed.

"Sodomy". Are you ready to allow gay marriages?

I believe that we need to follow the path that the United States followed before the decision of the Supreme Court, namely: to hold referendums at the level of federal subjects. Attitudes towards gay marriage will certainly be very different in Dagestan or in St. Petersburg. But personally, if there was a vote, I don't have any problems or obstacles to allowing people to get married.

What about the abortion ban?

I oppose the ban on abortion, of course. Now to ban abortions is simply to make it so that just thousands of women, tens of thousands of women, maybe hundreds of thousands of women, looking at the real statistics of abortions in Russia, will run around doing them illegally, they will die, they will get sick, some kind of illegal the medicine. Of course, this cannot be done. Of course, we must strive to ensure that there are fewer abortions, in Russia there are a monstrous number of them. But these are not prohibitive measures, these are financial measures, including so that a woman does not think that becoming a single mother is everything, these are problems, the collapse of life. These are social mechanisms.

Look, everything you say so far is really such a center-left agenda in general. What do you have from the right? Can you list yourself?

I do not understand, explain to me what is right? In traditional, I apologize very much, political science, the visa regime is probably considered the right agenda. I am in favor of issuing permits for the possession of handguns to people - this is traditionally considered a right-wing agenda. For example, in American political science it would be right. The visa regime, weapons are right. Prohibition of abortion is leftist. Tax cuts are right again. I say again, it all makes no sense in Russia, because in Russia the state is basically perverted, and what I am advocating is not a right agenda and not a left agenda, it's just a return to normality.

Conditionally, let's imagine these elections, there is Putin, who has his own electorate, his own understandable concept of the development of the state. What if we digress from corruption, from the Ozero cooperative, from your ...

I can't relax.

I understand, but try. Imagine that all this has already happened, you released all this, these investigations, people already know about them, see them, and so on. But from the point of view of the essential meanings of the development of the Russian economy and Russian politics, what can you oppose to Putin, what is your global difference from him, if we remove the topic that you are fighting theft, corruption.

This is the essential difference. It can't be taken away, and it's a key mistake of many people who say, "Well, fighting corruption - okay, this is such nonsense, let's talk about something else."

This is not nonsense at all, this is a very important work. But do you have something in the economic program, in the political development program, which…

Of course yes. We are against the fact that the state has now eaten the entire economy, we are in favor of reducing the role of the state, we are in favor of focusing on the development of human capital. Putin has consistently cut spending on education and health care and increased the military-police budget.

Tell me honestly, what is the reason for the fact that lately, I have been following your speeches, before they were harshly anti-Putin, there were a lot of offensive words, personal words, comparisons with some kind of animals, I don’t even want to repeat ...

With what animals?

I remember this speech from the rally, that he is now small and smooth as a mouse, huddled somewhere there, I don’t even want to quote. Why has this rhetoric changed now?

I, of course, support everything that I said before, I really think that they are corrupt officials and thieves, including Putin personally, they are, and it makes no sense to deny it. You are now asking me about the essential difference. I will not say: he is a thief, but I am not. Yes, it is a basic difference, but you asked about approaches to economics. Therefore, I say: my approach to the economy is that we will reduce taxation on small businesses, reduce payroll taxes, take more from Putin's sacred cow, namely from oil and gas companies, we will cut the military-police budget, develop human capital.

Let's be honest. Many people who support you...

I was honest from the very first word in this program.

The people who support you - big business, medium business, many of my acquaintances with whom I communicate - they all roughly say the same thing: “Yes, we don’t like what is happening now, we understand that Navalny is many rights. But we also understand that the breakdown of the system, even if it is as terrible as the system built now, will be an incredible crisis in any case. Like it was the crisis in the 90s, when the Democrats, on the right ideas of freedom and liberalism, destroyed the old system, and no matter how rotten it was, the hungry years still came, and they were not to blame for these hungry years, the system simply collapsed.

Are you afraid that you are a hostage of this process? No matter how wonderful you are, no matter how wonderful program you have, if it really happens that Putin leaves or something happens and you win now or in the next election, you will find yourself in a system that will be completely destroyed, a new cannot be created in a few days, and you will fall into the deepest economic crisis, from which you will have to ...

Not afraid. And your friends are wrong, and it is not predetermined. In fact, there are no real prerequisites for any cataclysms to occur.

Well, how is it not predetermined? Everything is now in this conditional cooperative "Lake", everything is distributed, all the mechanisms work crookedly. How are you all going?...

Firstly, as we can see, they practically do not work or, at best, crookedly. Dealing with the Ozero dacha cooperative is the least problem, it is quite easy to deal with it, these people have committed criminal offenses, and we understand how to prosecute them under the law, how to return their property back to the national property. In the 90s, all this happened because the price of oil dropped dramatically, there was simply no money, and Soviet Union, as now Russia, of course, is a raw material appendage of Western countries. At today's level, we are still making very, very much money at $50 a barrel.

And if tomorrow is Putin, imagine tomorrow Putin was taken away by aliens, and instead of him - Shoigu. In general, nothing will change. Nothing at all. Or then aliens took Shoigu, and instead of them - I know anyone from this government, Shuvalov is my unloved one.

May I continue this thought? Many believe that if aliens take Putin away, and even if Navalny is nearby, as the brightest politician of the younger generation, nothing will change either, because Navalny is one of the towers of the Kremlin.

This thought is wrong.

And they put everyone around, Navalny is the only one who does not sit, and somehow nothing so global happens to Navalny anyway. Why is it all set up like this? Here is a question that a lot of people are asking.

Nothing global is happening to me, except that my brother was imprisoned, who spent a year and a half in solitary confinement, except that our office is constantly raided.

Why are you free, Alexey?

You should ask those with whom you communicate at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum. I dont know.

I haven't been there this year.

I just do what I have to do, I do the things that I believe in.

Doesn't that make you think about something? Don't you think this is strange?

I think about it all the time, but I don't try to figure out what's going on in Putin's head. Once I was imprisoned, I saw what happened before my eyes.

Do you understand that you were released on Putin's personal order?

Do you understand that the decision on the elections and your participation in the presidential elections will be made personally by Putin?

No, I don't understand it. I know…

Don't you think so?

Let me answer. I understand that I was released on Putin's personal order, just as I was imprisoned before on Putin's personal order, for one simple reason: because people took to the streets. And on his perverted scales, on which Putin weighs what he needs to do and portrays himself as some kind of mental judoka, so he decided that now it is necessary to release and conduct some other strategy against us.

Therefore, what happens next - whether I register for the presidential elections or not - will not depend on Putin, it will depend on whether I can unite enough people who will create enough political pressure to force them to register me. Of course they don't want to, why do they need to register me? Of course, if we do nothing and become like all the other allegedly opposition politicians, of course, they will not register. They are stupid, right? They act according to their own logic. But we can certainly make them do it.

We remember that story, it was also discussed, about the fact that Sobyanin gave you votes so that you could be elected. It is clear that this was also done explicitly with some such supreme permission.

And why did the supreme resolution happen? Because I announced that I would run, it was just ... not these days, it was June 5th, and we immediately began to conduct election campaign. Two weeks later, we put the first, in my opinion, cubes on the street, we started a mass propaganda campaign, and all these supreme people, as you call them ...

We know how they withdraw from the elections, you know that.

You didn’t listen to me, and therefore you don’t know how they are removed from the elections. We began to conduct an aggressive election campaign, and the Kremlin, the mayor's office, anyone saw that no one would recognize these elections if they did not let me in.

So Sobyanin and Putin got scared?

Yes. They were afraid that these elections would not be recognized, and decided that yes, they need this municipal barrier that they put in front of everyone, in this case they need to raise it and allow me to vote. I don't care how they decide to do it there, I knew that I had the right to participate in the election of the mayor of Moscow, I demanded it, and I was admitted. And I know now that I have every right to participate in the presidential elections, that there are a large number of people who support me, and I will demand the realization of this right.

How can an experienced politician answer my question about some abstract Alexei Navalny? Let's digress a little from ourselves and just talk to me from the point of view of your political experience. My words will sound very cynical, I sincerely wish you many years of healthy good life ...

My God, are you going to ask my favorite question now: why weren't you killed? After the question of my second favorite: why you were not imprisoned.

Not certainly in that way. Conditionally, trying to get into the head of Putin and the people who make decisions, or Kadyrov, it seems obvious to me that, weighing the risks, especially after the tragedy that happened to Nemtsov, what are these people risking? The fact that 200 thousand people will come out once, and after that they will close the problem that is global for them? Because if you are not at the same time with them, you are a global problem for them. Conventionally, it's anything: I drove off the highway, I don't know, something happened, crazy Chechens arrived or some other story like that. Why, in your opinion, they do not go this way, which, we understand, that they went before our eyes ...

You are interested in all this, because you are a young political scientist and studied for it. And it doesn't interest me. I am not going to subject to any analysis of things that I know about. I have not seen Putin, I have not thought about it and I am not going to think about it, because I am not interested. How do you imagine that? That I came home and thought: why didn’t they kill me, because they would solve a global problem with this? It makes no sense to think about it, we do not know for sure how these people think.

I can tell you why you should think about it - because you are alone in this field precisely because ... you are a very talented person, but I am sure that we have many talented politicians in Russia who could compete with you in the struggle for this place and in the fight against Putin. You are alone precisely because everyone knows what is happening with Nemtsov, everyone knows that this can happen to any person who crosses this “double solid line”.

Wait. They are afraid. Everyone else is afraid.

They probably think that the option of just physical destruction is extremely possible.

Let's say it in a normal way. They don't want to compete with me because they are afraid.

Why are you not afraid then?

I'm not afraid. I'm a normal person, I don't enjoy the idea that something could happen, it's rather unpleasant for me when some kind of "outdoor" people constantly run after me or cars drive. But nevertheless, instead of working, I'm not going to think all day long: my God, why didn't they kill me? Yes, I have no idea. I do what they think is right, and I will do what I think is right, because it is right. People support me for this, 115 thousand volunteers signed up for me, my election campaign is funded by small donations, I see people's support and continue my activities. But that’s all, reflection on who killed whom there, didn’t kill - it’s pointless, it doesn’t make sense to waste time on these reflections.

Understood. But, given that you are not afraid of Putin, you are unlikely to be afraid of the Kovalchuks, so it’s a small question, but it’s important for me to ask you: why did you personally cut out a video about Kovalchuks from your site?

We have a lot of videos on our channel. There are investigations that I publish, there are just reflections or funny videos or reviews. There was a review about the Kovalchuks, and the point of the video was that all the media in Russia belong to Kovalchuk, and this is true, in this sense the video was true. But after it was published, I didn’t watch it, to be honest, before publishing it carefully, there was outdated data, that is, there was no meaningful error, but there was outdated data, so I said that we need to delete the video and make another one, more interesting.

So that was the only reason?

Oh sure.

I also cannot help but ask about Sechin. There was a story with spoons, but, as they say, the spoons were found, but the sediment remained.

Residue against me or against Sechin?

Against spoons. Why no major investigations about Sechin?

It seems to me that if we watch my channel, then I scold even Usmanov and Medvedev less than Sechin. That is, I talk about Sechin all the time.

The story of Stas Belkovsky is also a short question.

And what is the story with Stas Belkovsky?

We read a lot of some of his comments, and we know that you were also connected with him, Stas Belkovsky claimed and talked about giving you money. That is, in January 2010 there was a correspondence, it was recognized, this correspondence, the campaign against Oleg Deripaska's Rusal, 50 thousand dollars.

This is the first time I hear about this, that Stas Belkovsky said something and claimed.

"Vedomosti".

When it was?

Wait, it wasn’t Belkovsky who said it, sorry, I’m reading the respected publication Vedomosti, a quote from there: “From Navalny’s correspondence with political scientist Stanislav Belkovsky, it follows that in January 2010, Belkovsky ordered Navalny’s campaign against Oleg’s Rusal for $50,000 Deripaska. The company was just IPO.

Did Vedomosti write this? So, there were many different correspondences. Something was opened, something was not opened, something was invented.

Did you receive money from Stas?

For some kind of campaign against Rusal - of course not. Belkovsky and I talked for quite a long time and there was no funding ... Belkovsky - he doesn’t even have money to finance something on a large scale, this is quite interesting ...

Belkovsky gave you money - yes or no?

That is, the collision with Deripaska was in itself.

Even now I am ready to carry out an attack on Deripaska with pleasure, because Deripaska is the same raw material oligarch as everyone else.

That is, just at the moment when the company held IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

It had nothing to do with the IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Coincidence?

And it could not affect the IPO on the Hong Kong stock exchange. This, you know, from the same series, someone believes that I am attacking Shuvalov because Sechin asks me about it, or that I am attacking Sechin because Miller asks me about it.

It's clear. Another quote from your former colleague, should also lead her, from Udaltsov's wife. For some reason she is very...

Udaltsov's wife is definitely not my colleague.

You and Anastasia used to communicate, as I understand it, we even saw each other together, and Udaltsov was the person who was with you at the rallies.

Udaltsov? Sergei Udaltsov, who is a political prisoner and was one of the leaders of left-wing organizations, was certainly my colleague and participated in the Coordinating Council of the opposition. What his wife says is of little interest to me.

I will explain for our viewers, you said that you were busy raising money for Leonid Razvozzhaev and, accordingly ...

I wasn't busy collecting money.

That you collect money for prisoners is your quote, that people need to be supported, and so on.

I do not do that. I recently collected quite a lot of money, we collected 870 thousand rubles for a person who was arrested ...

You mentioned this in the city of Vladimir.

... for a man who was arrested at a rally on the 26th. As for collecting money for other political prisoners…

On Razvozzhaev - you also said.

Can I answer please? I supported it all, I called, but I did not directly collect. I wrote: “Transfer to such and such a wallet”, I did not directly collect, this is not my function, these are wonderful people who collect money, but I have a lot of work without it, I don’t have time to administer it all.

It’s just that Anastasia Udaltsova, in response to this, said that Alexei Navalny was lying in the rhythm of breathing, Razvozzhaev’s lawyer Agranovsky claims in a video message that he had not seen a single penny. In general, there was a whole such a big scandal.

Ksenia, if you go to Udaltsov's wife on Twitter, you will read this to yourself that it will be just scary.

I don't go.

And you are doing it right. And I don't go. I am not interested.

But I'm not running. You know, I'm in the house.

I'm running, but to be honest, even taking into account the fact that I'm running, I'm not at all interested in what Udaltsov's wife says.

You know, it's called, and about culture at the end. Have you heard...

The end has already come.

Do you want more with me?

Of course I want more.

With pleasure.

We have not yet decided where I am, right or left.

Well, you said that you are a centrist. That is, you occupy the place that United Russia is now.

I'm just to calm you down so that your political science itch stops.

Then you will have posters, and it will say: "I am for stability." Well, one more step, and we'll be there. By the way, this is a very good political move - young Putin. By the way, think about it.

You shouldn't have gone to MGIMO to study political science. Something else was needed, Xenia.

Why, if scolding Putin not for corruption, but for the fact that I’m just the same, but young, in principle, it would also be quite promising.

Can I give you some political science advice? You will run for office, you will say, I am young and a woman, and you will scold him for it.

Good. Now seriously, about culture. Many were very excited about the process that happened to Kirill Serebrennikov. A huge number of worthy people came to the theater. Why didn't you support this meeting with your own participation and weren't there, near the theater?

As far as I remember, I just then, it seems to me, was in Barcelona, ​​​​I did the operation. I won’t lie, I either went to open headquarters, or ... in any case, it seemed to me that I was not in Moscow. I spoke about Serebrennikov, and in my program.

Yes, I remember that.

I can now explain my position. But no, I did not come to the theater.

Your position is that this is actually a kind of general situation around theatrical cultural life, as I understand it, which, among other things, results in such things that ...

I believe that the case against Serebrennikov, and this is certainly a custom case, now a woman has been arrested there, from whom they are simply clearly knocking out evidence against him. And of course, this is a trend, in general, such a reactionary trend, when the state, in any more or less independent manifestations of something, in particular creative ones, despite the fact that Serebrennikov is quite loyal to the state, it can’t even tolerate this degree of loyalty, and therefore trying to eat everything, and trying to eat it now.

What is your favorite performance by Serebrennikov, if you have seen any.

I went to Muller's Machine, but I've never seen so many naked people in one place. I went just when there were elections in State Duma, it somehow resonated with what was happening. I liked Metamorphoses. I liked Muller's Machine, well, it's interesting, but I liked it a little less. I can't say that I'm a big theater lover. I'm not the right person to ask, because it turns out that I'm in this sense a redneck.

What three books have influenced you the most?

I read a lot and continue to read a lot. Influenced? The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was one of my favorite books. In general, Mark Twain, I really appreciated him, and still appreciate him. I find it difficult. My favorite book is War and Peace. I think that "War and Peace" is the main work, after which, in a certain sense ...

Are you seriously? Is this a book that influenced you? Are you seriously? Well, you are clearly not a Tolstoyan.

Firstly, where does the Tolstoyan? Secondly, what are you talking about, Xenia, what are you talking about?

Listen, the non-resistance of evil to violence, Tolstoy, the concept of what is impossible ...

It's not connected in any way. The philosophy of Tolstoy, what is usually called Tolstoyism, it has no direct relation to War and Peace, to what I really think is the main work of Russian literature and, perhaps, world literature.

What did you like about it? Why is it?

You know, by the way, to the question of your sarcasm, to the question of the words: my God, "War and Peace", ha ha, my favorite work.

Now I am completely sarcastic.

At Yale, I remember we had a strategic planning seminar, a seminar about strategy, which was very difficult to get into. And they said there that “War and Peace” is the main work that a person must read in order to get into our course at all and understand something in this course. Therefore, many appreciate Tolstoy even more than we do inside Russia.

I say this without sarcasm. Do you remember such a character, Platon Karataev?

Oh sure. But after all, I don’t have to identify myself with some characters, I don’t have to lie somewhere on the floor, look like Austerlitz is in the sky.

What's your favorite character?

No, I don't have a favorite character. I like this book, I find it interesting. I like the way it is written, I like the interweaving of characters, I like the psychologism, excuse me, Leo Tolstoy. But I'm not going to think about how I look like Pierre Bezukhov, or how I don't. Well, this is simply ridiculous.

Can you name a third book?

I don't want to name the third book for you. I'm sorry, I think this is a rather meaningless question, I like a lot of different books.

Not pointless at all. Do you know why it's not meaningless? I'll tell you why.

Let's also turn on Posner and ask me - what would I ask God if I were in front of him?

No, I hope you will someday tell Posner when he invites you to Channel One. I wish you to live until this time. But I'm asking you about books...

This is where it will be difficult.

I'm not just asking. For example, I recently finished reading the memoirs of one of my favorite American politicians, Roosevelt. And there, among other things, he very interestingly says that he believes that, in principle, a politician should not be a professional politician, but a president. That there should be a strong bureaucracy in America, but the president should be a person as far from politics as possible, preferably some kind of farmer or some person from other areas, because politics in itself spoils a person very much. And we know examples in history, such as Vaclav Havel or the example of Sakharov, who, perhaps, did not become a politician, but was, in fact, a great political figure.

Walesa is the same.

I'm not offended. I'm fine with all this. But people... Politics is a complicated thing. It is complex in terms of terms. Many people simply find it difficult to say correctly what they mean, again due to problems with this political terminology. Well, they talk and talk. Of course, I believe that it's not about the president, but about strong institutions. Excuse me for being so banal. There must be a bureaucracy, there must be a system that slows down any president, or vice versa, gives him a kick to work. Times have changed since Roosevelt. And as we can see, the president-businessman came to the White House, and something does not work out very well, apparently. But of course, I think that a person who enters these offices, presidential offices, he must first of all be a normal person, he must say the right things, he must have the right view of the world. And that is why, probably, the best presidents in latest story there were those who did not have much bureaucratic experience. Obama, the same Havel you mentioned, or Walesa, Angela Merkel, they didn't run any Gazprom, they weren't red directors, they weren't in big business. But they have the right views on how society should be organized. Because the president is the person who, by and large, has to say Right words, and conform in your daily life to the principles that he proclaims, and then everything below will begin to change.

Last question on this topic. Alexei, don't you think that the very idea of ​​becoming president and wanting to become president is quite strange from a psychological point of view? That is, this is the idea of ​​​​a maximum ego that wants to be realized in such an incredible position. Regardless of whether you want it for people, for the future of the country, this is the desire itself, and I know that you have a great desire and determination, you do a lot to achieve this goal, and I wish you got it sooner or later. This is the main purpose of your life. That's why, why you want to be so...

Ksenia, I do not have a manic goal to become president. I would like to change the country, also because I live in it, my children live here, my family lives here, friends, relatives. I like living here, I like speaking Russian. And I'm totally unhappy with what's going on. I know for sure, one hundred percent, that we could live much better if we changed some things in the country, and small things, they need to be changed, and tomorrow the world around us will become much better.

Are you not afraid that the authorities will spoil you, Alexei?

Any person is likely to be corrupted by power if he is in this power for too long. Therefore, it seems to me now that, of course, I ... well, of course, she will not spoil me. But people shouldn't believe in mere verbal guarantees, there should be a system where eight years is the maximum and goodbye, retire or do something else. Four years, I was able to be re-elected - four more years.

In your situation, you understand that it will not be so, that people will have to take your word for it, because you will come to the country, absolutely not having these institutions at the moment. With missing courts, with a corrupt system of everything and everyone state institutions, and you will come into this system in which you will have to believe that you will find in yourself the will to personally limit your own powers and build this system.

This is the wrong approach. We are not in Somalia, we are not in a primitive communal system, and now is not the 16th century. The necessary institutions in Russia are not only easy, they can be rebuilt quite quickly in the foreseeable and near future, if there is a desire, both the judicial system and law enforcement agencies. We have money, we have an educated population, some infrastructure remains, we have industry, so there is no need to say that we are right here with you in the desert, and people in loincloths are running around, and we must choose a chief justice from among them. Well, that's actually not the case. We understand how to reform both the judicial system and law enforcement agencies. When I become president, we will quickly create these institutions, also because we will introduce self-restraint, which concerns the reduction of the presidential term, the refusal to appoint judges and independence in appointment. The most important, one of the most important, is the independence of the media. Dozhd TV channel will broadcast what it wants, where it wants, on cable networks.

Will you come to the debate in the rank of president?

Tell me, please, did many presidential candidates sit in your chair and answer your questions, which I don’t always, I won’t hide, liked? I'm sitting here answering questions. And I will continue to answer them.

Thank you very much for this. I hope that in the new status we will have the opportunity to chat with you someday. Thanks for this interview Alex. Thanks for coming to our studio.

Thank you Xenia

I must say and apologize for the not entirely accurate quote by Lev Shlosberg, my editors tell me, it is true in meaning, but in terms of specific words, you can look at, and our viewers can look at Echo of Moscow, it is slightly different.

I forgive you, Xenia. And you'll excuse me for trying to piss you off with this wonderful video message, please forgive me.

Thank you very much. Alexei Navalny, politician, presidential candidate Russia was our guest today. Good luck to you, Alexey.