“Navalny” and the Struggle for Russia's Future: A Conversation with Investigative Journalist Maria Pevchikh

Maria Pevchikh is the head of the investigative

unit of the Anti-Corruption Foundation.

It is a principal organization.

She also happened to just win

an Oscar, as of this Sunday.

We have decided to take advantage

of the fact that she's here in L.A.,

and have invited her here to

talk about the movie, about Navalny,

about the future of

Russia, that she sees.

Lots of topics,

so we have prepared some questions

that will then open up for discussion.

So we're going to kind of move

between me and Dan.

Dan Treisman is a professor

of political science here at UCLA,

He is a leading expert on dictatorships,

and Russia, and a lot of other things.

So he's much more informed than I am.

I am a professor of economics here at UCLA.

As of a year, I have been

working on sanctions,

but otherwise I'm not completely,

you know, I do basic economics,

not particularly related,

but I happen to come from Russia.

So I wanted to give

a brief introduction to Maria.

I had learned about the

video for the first time,

I remember when it was.

A lot of us know.

This probably was August

or September of 2020, right?

Until then, Maria worked for a while

as a chief investigator. She, in

fact, was the author

of a lot of the movies

that Navalny and this foundation

released as part of their investigations.

And so probably she will

tell us a little bit about the main

project she worked on before.

But in August 2020,

Navalny was poisoned

while he was on the flight

from Novosibirsk to Moscow,

from Tomsk to Moscow.

And the plane was rerouted to Omsk.

He miraculously survived, and

the world learned about Maria,

who was traveling with him.

I very vividly remember the tweet.

And [. . .] said that Putin will regret

many, many times that he introduced

Maria Pevchikh to the public.

That would be something that would be

like his long-term regret in the future.

You know, as the next

two years showed, that

came to be the reality.

Obviously, our world was completely

upended about a year ago when

Putin invaded Ukraine. But before that,

some of the top news were

Navalny's poisoning, the investigation

of how the poisoning happened.

At least referring to Russia.

Maria played a very central role

in a lot of these events.

And movie Navalny

kind of tracks a lot of

these events in real time.

Of course, the movie ends

with Navalny in jail

as soon as he arrived to Russia, and

then the rest is history, as we know.

In retrospect, with the full-scale invasion

of Ukraine, a lot of the events

that have come down,

you know, became a lot clearer.

Why they happened, which we

didn't know obviously at the time.

And so we hope that, you know, Maria

would shed light on the some of the things,

of how things

came to be over this time.

So the first question, probably

we should start, if you could tell us

a little bit about yourself.

How does a young person

become an investigative

journalist, especially in Russia?

How did you start working with Navalny?

We have a mixed audience. Some

of the audience are students

and faculty of UCLA,

some of it is a broader

community, in a way.

And so some them know

you much better than others.

Hello, everybody. It's a

beautiful day, isn't it?

It's definitely very different

from London, where I come from.

So anyways, I love

speaking at universities.

I love acting and audience.

I am sure we are going to have a great

conversation and I almost don't

want to bore you with my

biography, my CV details. I'm sure

we have other topics to discuss.

I would like to focus on

just answering questions,

like if we could really be

very quick within trade

and things like that.

Let's do that.

And then I think we should

use this opportunity

to cover as many different

topics as we can.

So I'm absolutely happy to see

what questions you have lined up,

happy to take questions

from the audience.

Let's go. So this week, I am here

for a very pleasant reason,

which is the Academy Awards,

the Oscars, the ceremony

that happened this Sunday. And I'm sure

some of you have seen it on television,

I am sure maybe you have seen

pictures, and I will be very honest,

I don't think that this is

where an average investigator,

who specializes in investigating

corruption, ever thinks of ending up.

But here I am in L.A.

after receiving the biggest

cinematography awards in the world.

And that feels pretty

great, I have to say.

But the reason why I am here,

and the reason why we

were given this wonderful

golden statue is the

fact that Vladimir Putin

decided to kill my boss

with a chemical weapon.

And from the very day

it happened, from that

Thursday of August 20, 2020,

I knew that I would

probably dedicate my entire life

to it, to investigating

who did this to Navalny,

how it happened, who did it,

who paid for it.

And it really wasn't necessary

to spend the entire life.

Turns out that we were done

within two or three weeks.

Thanks to

Bellingcat and Christo Grozev,

who is around somewhere.

I've definitely seen him in the building.

The story of Navalny's

poisoning is probably

the most important investigation

that we have ever done

and one that has been recognized most.

But of course, apart from that one,

we have also published about

I asked my colleagues

to calculate it the other day.

So this is an approximate number

of everything that we have

published since 2011,

since the Anti-Corruption

Foundation was established.

And the reason for us being so stubborn

on investigating and publishing

those facts is that we believe that

corruption is Putin's weak spot,

and this is something completely crucial

to the survival of his regime.

And also at the same time,

something that is

like a magical baton to be pressed on,

which eventually, we hope,

is going to lead to the collapse

of his entire regime.

And this is, of course, our ultimate

objective, to free our

country, to free Russia

from a dictatorship that

Vladimir Putin established.

I will briefly answer your question.

I ended up doing what I'm doing,

quite frankly, I'm not

a journalist by education.

Back in 2011, and early 2011, I got to

talk to Navalny, who was looking

for a lawyer. I am not a lawyer,

and I still sent a message and a CV saying,

maybe I could be helpful in one way

or another. And it turned out

I could be helpful.

So this is how we came up with the idea

that we can do really investigative journalism.

We shared mutual dissatisfaction of what

Russian journalism looks like back in 2011,

which was still better than now, but not great.

You know, there were topics that

weren't allowed to be covers,

there were a lot of red lines

you couldn't cross.

So we decided,

what's the point of complaining about it

if we could do it better ourselves?

And this is how the

Anti-Corruption Foundation began.

We then branched out into making videos

with an ultimate most watched video

that we have ever produced,

which I filmed.

That's the investigation that has

been viewed by 120 million

people, an investigation that

has changed a lot of minds.

Let's put it this way. We had other

ones, other important investigations

which are valuable not because

they reveal certain facts.

They're valuable because

they are the reason why

perhaps at least one generation

of young people got political.

In a lot of rooms,

when I ask young guys, what

made you interested in politics,

how come, you living in

Russia, where it's cool

and great to be apolitical,

where it's encouraged

to not participate in the political,

how come you ended up being political?

And they would say: we watched

an investigation about Dmitry

Medvedev. And that's from 2007.

And that investigation sparked

huge protests in Moscow.

And those people, they were

from 16 to 20 years old back then.

This was their first political encounter.

That hoped and got them interested

in politics and that generation

today is probably the core of the anti-Putin

and anti-war protests.

So for those, I mean,

obviously a lot of you follow

what Anti-Corruption Foundation

is doing on YouTube.

So Navalny is a great movie to get into it.

But behind Navalny movie,

there is lots of YouTube footage

which later became

part of the movie, right?

It's about the original

investigation and

the original phone call, that

Navalny gave to one of the poisoners.

And so a lot of this is on YouTube.

And also all these movies

that Maria is referring to are also, like

the Putin's palace is one of the most

watched movies on YouTube.

It's all available.

And I mean, it's kind of like the modern

Russian history documented

in these YouTube investigation and in

what Anti-Corruption Foundation has done.

So just to give you a little background.

And they all have English subtitles.

Thanks.

I'm blown away by your

perfect British accent,

and great grasp of English.

I would love to hear an explanation, but

I want to ask you about something else.

So first of all, congratulations on the Oscar.

It is absolutely amazing that

the film won. It is so important

and a sign that it really touched

many people through the story,

that together you tell it this movie.

But I want to ask what

do you know currently

about the state of Alexei.

I've heard that his health was bad,

ad he was not doing so well.

Can you give us any update

on that? Has he heard that

the film won? He has definitely

heard that the film won.

He had a court hearing on Monday

at 9 a.m., which is the

middle of the night here.

We were at Vanity Fair after the Oscar.

So that's the fancy one.

That's the one where you see

so many celebrities, you want to

hide and avoid being intimidated.

We knew that a lawyer

would see him probably 10-15

minutes before that hearing.

And, of course, the lawyer

would say that he won on Oscar.

And the lawyer did say that.

Navalny was very humble about it.

There is footage of him

being very smiley about it.

But then he said, that this is

not him wining an Oscar.

It's the team, which is factually correct.

Of course, it is the film that won an Oscar.

But I guess everybody in the team,

and everybody who voted for

the film, they realize that the

centerpiece of this entire story

is Navalny and his contribution to this film.

The interviews that he gave, the hours

that he spent talking to Daniel Roher, the director,

the unprecedented access

that Navalny's family

gave to the filmmakers.

Of course, this is what

makes the film great.

So I'm still waiting for a long

feedback from Navalny.

And I hope that he will be

able to pass it on.

His condition right now,

nothing really changes, sadly.

So they talked about five months

ago, or a bit more, in August.

They have come up with a very

sickening system for him.

In Russian prisons,

and in strict regime prisons,

where he is, there is a separate

part of prison used for punishment purposes.

So it's a sense of separate

cells, commonly referred

to as solitary confinement.

These cells are not about solitude.

It's about being deprived

from the very basic

things that you have in

the penal colony anyways.

He lives in a small room,

in a cell with concrete walls.

It's about

two and a half by three meters large.

It has barely anything in it.

And I mean, you can make five steps

one way, five steps the other way.

That's it. There is a bed without a mattress.

The mattresses are only given for specific hours.

I think he is being chained up

to the wall at 5 a.m.

every morning, and is being

changed down at 9 p.m.

So during the day,

Navalny is not allowed to

lay down, have a rest, or even

just sit down on the bed.

He has a stool without the back,

he has a small table

and he's allowed to use pen

and paper for 35 minutes a day.

That's specifically 35 minutes a day.

And this time, he uses

to write those letters to

people who need to be supporting

and respond to some correspondence

that he receives etc.

And the rest of the time

he is allowed to read,

but he does not really get

many books transferred to him.

And he is

entitled to a 40-minutes

or an hour-long walk,

but that walk is not really

a walk or exercise of some sort.

They just walk him to the cell

next door, identical tiny cell,

with a difference that

that one doesn't have a ceiling.

So technically you can see the sky

and that's considered to be a walk.

That's the amount of fresh air

he gets during the day.

And of course, given this conditions,

lack of exercise, malnutrition,

the quotas for food, the food allowance,

that you get in prison when you are

in solitary confinement, is reduced.

So he's entitled to less calories

than other prisoners would be.

And due to that fact,

due to the fact that he consumes

an average of 1,500 calories a day,

which is not enough for a man,

he steadily loses weight. I'm sure

maybe you have seen pictures of Navalny.

He looks very skinny.

He doesn't look healthy at all.

He doesn't gets to exercise.

His health condition is not being checked at all.

He's been refused medical

treatment on many occasions,

including medical treatment

associated with his back problems.

That is a

serious medical condition

that he has with his spine,

which has at some point

led to him losing his ability to walk.

He physically could not get up

in the morning from the bed,

and they still would not treat him.

You are only allowed,

legally, to be placed in this

solitary confinement for 15 days.

So this is the way that Russian prison

law works, but they're torturing him.

That's the agenda.

They want him to suffer.

So they came up with

a system of roling sentences.

So they would put him there

for 15 days, say on Monday

in the morning, he's released.

He spends a couple of hours

checking out, going through procedures etc., etc..

He's out.

And then towards the end of the day, they

will press other sets of charges against him.

So he's going back to solitary

confinement for another 15 days.

It is entirely and completely unique.

The cells, the confinement cells

are not built in the way to be lived in.

You are only meant to be there for two

weeks approximately. On top of it,

they've done a really

a thing that is beyond what is

comprehensible, which is placing

a mentally unstable, mentally

sick person in a cell next to him.

So there is

a person with a serious

medical condition, who

spends the entire night

screaming, shouting,

barking and howling,

essentially making it impossible for Navalny,

who's in there, to sleep. At some point,

They introduced a cell

mate to Navalny, who was used

as a biological weapon of some sort,

because that guy would spend

half of his week in the medical unit

surrounded by people who were sick.

The plan was that he would be infected

in that medical unit,

and become a carrier of

COVID, flu, you name it,

and transfer back to Navalny.

So they've done that a couple

of times hoping it would work.

Four times it didn't work, the fifth time

that sick person was brought in,

Navalny also got a flu of some sort.

And this was over Christmas,

and he was really unwell. And again,

not treated for weeks, weeks and weeks.

Then in the end, we pressured

them into into allowing doctors

to see Navalny and they

started to treat him with [. . .].

So a doctor with no name,

no surname, no ID of any sort,

which just showed up in his cell

and injected a syringe of something.

The lawyers have written numerous

requests, at least asking to

find out who the person is.

Everybody in any country is entitled

to see their medical record, but not Navalny.

So that's the situation

where he's in the moment.

His health, his immediate

health is okay. He's not sick

at this very moment.

But as I said, he is underfed.

He is completely...

...someone who has survived

chemical weapons poisoning.

I remind you, two years ago,

his entire nerve system was down.

It was just completely off.

And then German doctors

managed to restart it, etc.

No one knows long-term consequences

of being poisoned with Novichok.

There's no scientific data to do that.

So we are very, very concerned

when it comes to Navalny's health.

We know that

the prison administration won't lift

a finger to help him if something happens.

And this is exactly the reason why we keep

talking and talking and talking about

Navalny, why we keep using occasions

like the Oscars, the BAFTAs,

and similar events, where

the movie is being played,

to keep him in the spotlight.

We believe that this

is his health insurance.

This is the way to keep

the costs of trying

to murder him again so high

that Putin wouldn't

dare to attempt it again.

So we have a set of related,

difficult questions.

So given that in your movie in particular,

and with your investigations, you established

beyond reasonable doubt that Putin

did try to kill Navalny before.

And now that he is in captivity,

we have a sense,

as an organization,

we have a sense whether

it's a strategy to torture him,

but make sure that he survives,

or in fact, that is a strategy

to see him die in prison.

Is there a clear idea about that?

Or Putin just leaves this

to chance, whether it happens or not?

Is there an international initiative

that you're aware of, of trying

to get Navalny out of prison,

maybe exchange him for somebody?

And in fact, if that happens

would Navalny accept that,

given that he went back

to Russia on his own?

I think it's good that

this came up so early.

I think that we should establish

for our entire conversation

that we shouldn't be trying

to get into Putin's head.

Because it is not possible

to make any sense out of a man

who is not governs by logic, rational

thinking or anything like that.

Putin is chaotic.

He makes random

moves at random times,

and this unpredictability is something

that his regime is very much based on.

It's a feature of Putin's Russia.

So I'm not

going to even think and

elaborate on what's the plan.

Slowly to torture and kill,

or kill one day through,

I don't know, one inmate attacking him.

Putin is very opportunistic.

On Tuesday, it might be more valuable

for him to have Navalny alive, on Wednesday

he can change his mind

and think that Navalny should be

tortured, on Thursday it changes again.

There are too many variables to be able

to make any valuable conclusions.

And in terms of

the second part of your question,

to the attempts to release Navalny.

And I hope that everyone

in the audience appreciates

that this sort of initiatives,

and this sort of genre of negotiations

does not imply a public discussion.

I am not in the position to

give any additional details.

I can only assure every single person that

I dedicate every day of my life

to making sure that

Navalny gets out of prison

as soon as possible, and I'm not

the only person that is doing that.

and this is our ultimate

and most important objective,

which we all believe is achievable.

Maybe I'll ask one more question and

then we'll open it up to the audience.

The world has changed

since Navalny set up the

Anti-Corruption Foundation. In the

last couple of years, we've seen

increasing repression at home

and of course, in Ukraine.

So how do you keep going?

How do you

plan strategy in this new environment?

Where are the key

members of the organization?

I think outside of Russia now.

How are you thinking about

the challenge at this point?

Does this require a whole new approach

or do you do the same things,

but from outside the country?

Where do we go from here?

In terms of our day-to-day job,

we are saying exactly the same thing

that we've been doing back in Moscow.

And it is the matter of

principle to do that.

When Putin was poisoning

Navalny, when Putin

tried to kill Navalny,

he quite clearly wanted

Navalny's activities to stop.

He wanted investigations to stop.

He wanted our political work to stop.

None of us are ever going

to get this gift of

doing nothing to Putin.

None of us are going to give up

and make Putin's life easier.

It is a matter of principle for us,

despite the fact that Navalny is, temporarily,

out of action. As a matter of principle,

we just continue doing that,

preferably will do more of that,

which at least in terms o

investigations, we are doing.

We are publishing overall in these two and

a half years more than we published in similar

two and a half years before. And Navalny's,

imprisonment is very important

and we are doing it

knowingly and consciously.

We want to send a

signal to the Kremlin that

killing Navalny

is not going to solve the problem.

Killing me is not going to solve the problem.

The investigations will still come out,

no matter what. The political activities,

our sanctions-related work,

our lobbying activities.

This is still going to go on despite

other people that are going to prison.

In terms of a longer-term

strategy, of course, we

do try to strategize

as any organization would. But the

us one important thing.

You can plan, and plan, and plan,

and then one morning, everything,

the entire chessboard is being flipped.

And nothing makes sense anymore.

And things are happening

so quickly, and so rapidly,

that all your strategies can be just tossed.

And they don't make sense anymore.

And as I said before, Putin

is an extremely chaotic man.

We don't know what his plans

are in terms of Ukraine.

He says one thing, but does another thing.

And he planned to take over Kyiv

in three days, and it's been

a year, and he is nowhere close.

They are fighting for a

little village somewhere

in Eastern Ukraine,

and it's been reported

like the biggest victory.

Our job is to stay

strong and stay ready.

In this chaos, that will

be happening at the point

when Putin is collapsing, when

his regime is collapsing. Either way,

by the means of his death,

or by the means of someone

overthrowing him in some other way,

our job is to stay as ready,

and as prepared, and as equipped

as we can, and to act in

this moment accordingly.

To follow up very quickly on that.

You personally or among other

people of the organization,

who were going to lead it

in the coming year?

Navalny's activities screwed down,

temporarily or longer-term,

who are the key actors

at the moment, who are

keeping the organization going?

When Navalny went to prison,

we had come up with a design

on behalf of the organization,

which should be functional

and made to long-term

imprisonment that we predicted.

And basically there are three people

being in charge of the organization,

independently,

no one being a boss no another.

So I was left in charge

of the investigations.

That's my old job.

And I acquired a new job of being

responsible for all of our media projects.

All our YouTube channels and popular politics

YouTube channels, and other YouTube channels,

everything that we have, Telegram

channels, everything that has to do

with mass media, with us, telling the news

anything like that.

That's me. Plus investigations.

The political part of our life,

the sanctions work, lobbying work,

meeting with government

officials from abroad etc.,

all the political side,

internal and external,

that's Leonid Volkov. And all of

the organizational stuff,

the actual day-to-day running

of the Anti-Corruption Foundation

pay people salaries, hiring them,

organizational structures,

everything like that, that's [. . .]

Yes, currently due to a recent

event, Leonid Volkov did

take a temporary pause,

I think, as he phrased it.

And we had promised that we are going

to address the situation together with

key members of the

Anti-Corruption Organization.

We haven't done it yet,

because of me being here.

But the day when I fly back to Europe

we will immediately meet

and hopefully come up

with a good and decent solution

given what has happened.

We still have time, so we can

keep the microphone for a little bit,

and then we'll open it up.

So you mentioned an interview

that you gave that kind

of blend out the whole event

when Alexei is coming back to

Moscow in February 2021,

in case he will be jailed immediately,

in case he will stay free for a while or,

you know, will be able to communicate

and so on.

It's just very interesting

to get a little bit

into that thought process.

How did you put up the fact that

he might be jailed immediately?

That you viewed it as the most likely outcome

or you couldn't tell at the moment?

Obviously, at the time this was

an incredibly powerful gesture

what Alexei did - coming back home.

It felt very important.

It kind of gave a lot of

inspiration to a lot of people.

In fact, in the Navalny movie, when

you watch the scenes of people

you know, greeting

Navalny at the airport,

and then the protests

went he was jailed,

it just seemed like it was a much, much

freer country, even with all the,

you know, restrictions and limitations

compared to what we have now.

And so obviously, you mentioned

that when you planned it out,

you did not anticipate the war in

Ukraine. That was not something

that was an calculatable event.

And so with the benefit of hindsight,

if you knew that this whole grand strategy

is really about bringing in the war

in Ukraine, which puts into perspective

the poison, and the jail and,

you know, the rest of the repressions

before the war, do you feel like it

would make a huge difference

if Navalny could organize

the sort of resistance and opposition

from being in the safety of Europe

or that this gesture of

coming back to Russia

is still so essential that no

matter how the events turned out

afterwards, it was a necessary

thing to be done at that time.

There are too many hypothetical

parts of your question

which make it very difficult

and only pointless

to think about because, well,

of course, the war was unpredictable.

We planed for every scenario except

from the war, because who could ever think.

And it is quite common and I've

heard this in many interviews,

people saying that if the war was

was there, Navalny would not have come back

But again, we can't get into

Navalny's head, we don't know.

I am not as certain as the

speakers who say that,

because I remember the

months that we spent

in Germany while Navalny was going

to be treated, and I remember

clearly that when Navalny

was still at the ICU,

so he would only talk for

maybe 15-20 minutes a day,

because the rest of the time

he had this tube in his throat,

that doesn't allow you to talk.

So it needed to be taken out

and then he was able to talk.

And literally on the first day

when he could make a coherent

sentence, he says, I'm going back.

So in a way,

it makes things almost easier because

there was never any choice.

And whoever it is, you know,

maintaining a discussion,

or claims that, you know, analyzes

that, they have convinced him to go back.

Or if they haven't convinced him.

There was a discussion, you know, or

a great decision-making process.

No, there was nothing like that.

The only discussion was about

when Navalny is doing that. And we

were asking and convincing him

to at least allow like three months,

two months, to go through proper rehab,

so he goes to Moscow in a health

condition, which is, maybe not perfect,

but close to fully recovered, right?

So that was the only conversation.

That was never a choice.

This makes things very easy for me

because there is no hindsight.

So there is no, if we could

have changed anything.

And I also remember Navalny towards

the end of his stay in Germany, probably

late December, early January, weeks

before he actually flew back home,

you could see

and you could feel how anxious

he was becoming,

how he was feeling that

he's losing touch with Russia,

and with people, who support him

in Russia, with Russian agenda.

And although he still spent days reading

news on Twitter, following everything,

he still felt like, I'm not there,

I don't get the entire picture.

I only get a photograph of something,

but not, you know, a proper video

and a 3D feel of things. He

really, really wanted to go back.

And it's unthinkable to

imagine the circumstances.

I'm going to make a very inspiring

speech at the end of the film,

where I'm asking people not to be

afraid, not to be inactive and to fight.

And I'm myself going to stay

in the safety of Germany.

This is extremely unlike him.

This is just very difficult to imagine.

So I think that Navalny would have

ended up in Russia one way or another.

We, of course, planned

for this specific scenario,

where we'd lose

touch with him for a long time,

but in a very weird way at the same time,

we thought that it might not happen

and he could just

peacefully go back home from the airport

and go back to the office the day after.

Because the office was still

there, it was before

we were designated the status

of a terrorist organization.

And I remember thinking like,

oh, wow, how weird

would it be after all of this

to just go back to normality?

I think I was thinking,

what's this psychological phenomenon

called, when you at the same time

prepare and equally believe

in two contradicting scenarios.

And I think it is just hope.

So the first hand I saw was over here.

Please, speak up.

Thank you for your time here.

So the question I have is,

do you have a tree of events

or potential scenarios,

which could come to, you know,

end the regime or overthrow Putin?

There is so many.

And if you are using a tree comparison

that would be a very weird tree

with too many branches.

We are not fortune tellers, and

anybody who will be sitting here

or elsewhere and telling you that

this is how it's going to happen,

is probably foolish.

About a year ago,

imagine that if you watched the

YouTube news about Russia, or read,

how many analytical articles

have we read about the elites

breaking away from Putin?

I remember reading everywhere, from Russian

reputable media to the Financial Times,

and The Economists,

they were name dropping.

They were saying these and these

oligarchs have boarded their private jets.

They're on the way out.

They've taken their billions.

They're going to spend them on

like assassinating Putin, or

hiring mercenaries,

they said, to get rid of him.

We've read so much insights.

Like that group, the liberals,

the collective for Alexei Kudrin.

They are going to walk out

right now, slamming doors.

[...] Central Bank

is wearing a black brooch,

she's signaling that she's out.

It's been a year and a month

and none of that happened.

And I can maybe hypothetically believe

that they had an evening or two,

those leads, you know, when

they were like: oh, should we go, or

should we stay? They didn't go.

They decided to stay put.

They decided to go for the strategy

where they can stay in

Russia rather than

taking whatever they can, and

losing everything they've left behind.

All right, so that's the reality

where we are in. I can give you

theoretical scenarios,

but you can point a gun at me,

I will not assign

any probabilities to them.

I won't.

I respect our audience

too much to be

sitting here and telling you

this is what's going to happen.

Vladimir Putin has cancer.

Vladimir Putin has this. Look,

he's walking in a dodgy way,

he must have probably that.

I'm not saying that,

I love you guys too much. When I know,

you'll be the first ones to know.

I promise.

[question from audience - inaudible]

It's a very complex question,

but I'm trying to keep it short.

So the main difference between

us and other political powers in

Russia is the fact that we have

a consolidated support base

which originated from the

aforementioned protests

after the Dmitry Medvedev investigation,

and then most importantly,

after Navalny's campaign to run

for the presidency back in 2017.

So this was the time when Navalny

physically visited over 80 Russian cities.

In 80 Russian cities,

we opened our offices.

These little offices, I mean,

most of them were funny in a way,

or rather sad,

because they were tiny little room.

We couldn't afford anything else.

They were quite central in the cities

and they could fit like maybe three tables.

And we would call them

the Navalny headquarters.

During the campaign,

during the presidential campaign,

they had a very clear job.

They were helping us organize rallies.

They were helping organize

people who supported Navalny.

They printed posters,

stickers, etc., etc..

But the one way campaign was over,

we really didn't know what to

do because it's expensive

to maintain offices in 80 Russian cities.

I don't think that Putin's party, United Russia,

has this amount of real offices,

and real people working for them.

And so we have cut down the

number of them to about 40.

But still, I think until 2020,

until the poisoning and a little bit

after that, we has a network of

around 44 regional headquarters.

And these offices where the centers

of political activity in each city.

They were the magnets

for everybody who were

even a little bit interested

in politics, for anybody who's young,

they don't have an outlet

for their political activity,

they didn't know where to go.

There isn't a youth political party.

There isn't a club or a

society that they can join.

But there is Navalny's headquarters.

And the entire regional

agenda was sold there.

Like Ufa is a great example.

Our headquarters there

was headed by Lilia Chanysheva.

She's in prison right now.

A girl of my age,

she has a great background,

great education.

She worked at KPMG, I think,

before joining Navalny office.

One girl with tiny little team,

she has become the chair of

this activity in the entire big region.

She was the main enemy of

the government in that region.

She was the one organizing protests

against anything that was relevant

in the region, be that

some environmental issues

or economical issues, any of that.

So this is the way our model

worked. Exactly that,

and not our investigations,

is our main asset,

because we have real people behind us.

We saw that people, even in the film,

you saw them when Navalny was landing,

you saw them in two airports in

Moscow. After Navalny was in prison,

You saw them in the streets of Moscow,

being packed into these police vans

and transferred to

temporary detention centers.

I can give you very dry

demographical data about them.

They mainly consist of people

from like 24 to 35.

So not the youngest

that you think of.

Not the 18 year olds.

not necessarily Moscow,

educated to the best available level

in their region. Very predictable stuff.

Mainly men, but also I think

the proportion of women

is increasing over time,

and we're very happy about it.

So it's the usual suspects.

There's nothing shocking there

in our demographics.

And what we doing now, is

we are trying to rebuild

this network that we lost after

we were getting this thing

labeled as terrorists

and it became illegal

to cooperate with us.

We're trying to rebuild it, but

anonymously. We came up with,

our IT people came up with

a system, which has quadruple

level of anonymity. You can

only access it through Tor,

we are using VPN,

it doesn't record anything about you.

Nothing.

It gives you a temporary e-mail

that you can only use once, and a login.

A password and a login. If you forget

it, that's it. There is no way to restore it.

So there's no way to get in

touch with support. Nothing.

And people sign up for that.

And there they create little groups

by regions or by interest, and they

either and just come up with things,

political things to do, or we

give them tips what they can do.

To print a leaflet, stick a poster

in an elevator and things like that.

And some of them, completely

independently from us,

recently organized an attack,

like they've taken down

the websites of Channel 1 and 2

in Russia at the time of Putin's

address to the nation.

I would mention they

were just IT guys

who decided it would

be fun to do that.

It's fun to do that.

So we're trying to bring life back

to our regional headquarters

and make it as safe as possible

so the participants of that

are not identifiable.

Thank you very much for coming down here,

and for your tremendous work that

you've done with the investigations.

There are a couple of conferences coming

up, one in Berlin, and one in Brussels.

[inaudible]

...opposition leaders working together

and trying to find a consensus

on how to work in the same direction,

at least on some points. And my

question is largely to the

puzzle how to elect their leader?

[inaudible] and having election

of the Russian opposition

leader outside of Russia.

We have a leader.

We have a leader, and we're very

happy with Navalny, our leader.

And I don't think that his authority

is being questioned by anybody.

That's a pretty universal, I think, acceptance

of his reputation and trustworthiness, etc., etc.

I don't see much point in

creating a parliament in exile,

or holding an election to, I don't know,

choose Mikhail Khodorkovsky or

Garry Kasparov as the leader or

as the head of something.

I'm just trying

to be utilitarian here and

I'm looking for value added.

I'm looking for something

that will be able to

come on top of what we already have.

I think that the worst thing

that I can do for our supporters,

the people I spoke about

answering previous questions,

I think the worst thing

that I can do for an average girl or boy,

who follows us and has been

involved in our movement,

is to waste my time going

to conferences, speeches,

and round tables where it would

be just like having a talk show.

They don't deliver anything, but resolutions.

I think I am obliged to

make sure that I spend every minute

of my life, every minute of my

workday in the most efficient way.

And every time

when I have a dilemma, when

I have a choice whether to go and

take part in a meeting of an opposition

this and that, a round table

somewhere in a small city,

I'm making a choice between going there

and making a new investigation.

And I know that my

investigation will get watched

by millions of people. If it's a

bad one, probably 3-4 million.

It is a good one, more than 10 million.

And every time I answer this dilemma

in the very same way. Of course, my

main value, my main deliverable

is that. The words of truth,

new facts, new facts about

corruption, about Putin's regime,

about how it works,

you know, enlightenment and

just the spreading of information.

So I am sure if there is a situation

where these so-called

joining of the opposition,

or the creation of some body

would be an effective

tool, and it would appear

relevant, I'm sure we would join.

Shouldn't you support Julia Navalnaya's

candidacy for Russian opposition?

But I'm pretty sure that Julia Navalnaya

should want to do it herself.

We cannot just assign her a role.

She's a human being

and she has her own plans

and her own desires. In that

very same way, I don't enjoy

carrying that political weight either.

I'm an investigator.

And it's always a little bit strange

for me when people are expecting

or telling me like: Oh, Maria,

go there, have a conversation with this

other opposition leader,

come up with a plan.

What are we going

to do with this?

Are we going to just post it on

our website and publish it

and make it a nice pdf with signatures?

I don't know.

I think that I would like to believe

that, when it makes sense,

I will recognize it. When

there is an offer, or situation,

or an opening of some sort,

where a joint effort would be needed,

I hope we will be able to recognize

that moment and join and consolidate.

There is another question up there.

Every day we see what happens

with Ukrainians, but less obvious,

we see what happens with

Russians who leave their country.

Maybe it is less important. And it is

true that here in Southern California

we are a point of entry,

where a lot of Russians, who

are against the war, are entering

Southern California, a place where we live.

And I will just ask you, do you

acknowledge the suffering that

some of these Russians have?

And maybe you our organization

has a deliberate plan of action

of helping them? For example,

helping with money,

helping with their businesses

and so on, because people from

Russia sometimes find themselves

between two places,

between the bloody regime

and misunderstanding

from people in the West.

And I just want to hear

what you think about that.

I fully acknowledge the

problem with Russians

leaving the country and running

from either the war or mobilization.

And I fully acknowledge the fact that

hundreds of thousands of

people ended up with the necessity

to set up their new life, with

like carrying like a backpack,

and a dog. That's

all they have from their old life.

Obviously, it's not great.

And obviously there is a problem

and there is a great unfairness

in places where Russian people

would be denied visas for absolutely

no reason, when they are perfectly

eligible to get a talent visa of

some sort or work visa of some sort

and they are not getting it.

Sometimes even they have been denied

entry to the country just

because of their passports.

This is a situation

that Vladimir Putin

put us in, right?

We have to keep it clear.

Vladimir Putin did this to us,

to those people who left country,

To get away? Yes. Those people who left

very much, in the same way,

are victims of Putin's regime.

But again, I would never put this

in the same sentence

with Ukrainian victims

of Putin's regime.

Those are very, very different stories.

If I had, and maybe our organization

eventually will end up with a little bit

more resources, time and

money-wise, to invest into

some legal activities

in that respect,

if I was asked whether we should do

that, I would say, yes, we should do this.

I think it's our obligation

as well to take care and

to try to help Russian people

who are abroad. I do

not want to prioritize

and I will never prioritize this over

Russian people who have stayed

in the country, because

these people are very much

in danger, and these people

require a lot of help, as well.

It's about distribution of resources.

In an ideal world, of course,

I think that's the topic

that a political voice,

not necessarily us, it could be

any of the people that you mentioned.

But again, if someone took responsibility

over this, I think it would be a great idea.

[question from audience - inaudible]

We did mention the war

and the Ukraine at the acceptance speech.

And unless I'm wrong, I don't know,

but I am pretty confident that we were

the only ones who did

it in the entire ceremony.

The other films,

including the films about this war,

when they were accepting,

I think they were just wearing

some sort of badge, sort of pin

without explaining what it means.

But we used our 45 seconds on stage.

This is all you get.

Daniel said two sentences about

the war,

about Navalny's position on

the war, and about Ukraine.

So I'm not sure, if we dedicated,

I don't know, like 30-40% of our speech

to that, I'm not sure

what more we can offer.

I don't think that this,

[. . .] the Oscar,

I don't think it was actually about us.

I don't think we did anything wrong.

I think that the acceptance

speech was brilliant.

And we didn't deliberate on whether

to include references to Ukraine

at the award in the speech.

It was obvious we would do it.

It was absolutely obvious we would do it.

There was no debate, no discussion.

Of course, we would do

that in the first paragraph.

I think that this is the

scary and dangerous

phase of the war. I don't

think that us being

Russian right now

can be mitigated by anything.

I don't think that and I appreciate that

Ukrainian people may now

experience a very broad range

of negative emotions towards us.

And I would never judge them for that,

because of what Putin has

done to their country,

and the magnitude of destruction and tragedy.

that has been brought to their lives,

like on our behalf although

we were never asked. Putin did it,

you know, using our names

like in our passports, the word Russian.

That's is a huge tragedy.

And I'm sure that

as will sadly take generations

and generations

and many acceptance speeches

and many conferences

and many statements

to be able to move this

situation in any way.

[question from audience - inaudible]

I didn't see a petition,

not to sure what it is about.

But generally in terms of

collective responsibility,

I don't accept it. I don't accept

collective responsibility

of every Russian for the war.

I just mentioned to the person

speaking before you,

that Russians have not authorized this war.

Collective responsibility

is an instrument, a concept

that can be very dangerous,

because it is just spreading

the responsibility and the

guilt in a very thin layer

onto everybody, whereas those

people who are actively responsible

and guilty, the actual war criminals,

they get a thinner

layer of that responsibility.

And I don't think that

this should be happening.

I cannot possibly accept that

Alexei Navalny has any responsibility

in the war.

I cannot accept that

Alexei Navalny's movement

as a whole, and those people who

supported him, people who protested

and voted for him in the

most nightmare of elections,

I don't accept that they

are responsible for this war.

So I might be philosophically wrong

about that, but this is how I feel.

I want to echo what everyone has said.

We are very grateful to have you here at UCLA.

Especially after winning the prize.

I have a somewhat different question,

which is that often in the US

we hear people very

afraid about instability

of our own democracy.

A lot of those comments probably

feel pretty ridiculous to you,

but I was curious if you

have any thoughts on

how we can conserve and strengthen

our own democracy here in

the United States going forward.

I probably have more faith in

American democratic institutions

than those Americans who are saying

that it is in danger. And maybe it's easier,

as an outsider. I'm not sure.

I'm on your side.

I'm not great with American politics.

I only follow it

as any reader would.,

You know, big elections

and things like these, I follow.

If anything, I think that

the experience with Trump

has actually given me

hope and trust in American institutions.

That the institutions have

thrown away,

you know, like essentially [. . .]

Trump and his legacy.

And he didn't manage to do many of

the things that he was going to do.

And the institutes,

the working institutions,

have stopped him.

What is important is

that in many countries,

I think just despite how old

and mature the democracy is,

you still need to take care

of it and protect it.

Like with any precious

and invaluable belonging,

you don't just leave it, you know, and let

it be and hope that it's going to sit there and

work perfectly. No, you still

need to be conscious.

You still needs to make sure

that you flag dangerous things

when they happen, that you flag

occasions, when there is the restriction

of freedom of speech, or any

other freedoms, or any abuse

of power of any sort.

And we need to take care of

our democracy,

your American democracy.

But I have quite a bit of faith

that you guys would be able to,

you know, balance it out.

And I don't predict any sort of

collapse of the United States of America.

I actually will take advantage of the fact

that I'm close to the microphone.

Some of those questions actually

make me think about the following,

but it's not about joint responsibility

or collective responsibility.

But it's impossible not to acknowledge

the fact that Russians, along

the way, have lost their agency.

They have lost their ability to decide for

their faith, their country.

It's true that they did not take

the decision to start the war,

but they lost their ability to

control the decision making, right?

And so obviously, this goes back far.

I was a student 25 years ago,

and I remember I didn't go out to protest

against NTV, if you remember the TV channel.

So that's around 2001.

And so that was one step

along the way of losing agency.

But in retrospect, can you tell

what were the pivotal moments

when Russians had the chance

of gaining that agency?

What went wrong?

To what extent,

you know, consolidation

was possible at some point

but didn't work. What, in your opinion,

are the pivotal moments when that happened?

I think there is one big thing to correct.

There is a big difference

between two situations.

When you walk in the street and

your wallet just drops from your pockets.

You keep going, you lost your wallet.

And there is a very different situation

when a person with a knife or gun

approaches you and takes your wallet.

This is when when you are being robbed.

It is being taken from you.

So I again, I don't like the whole,

you know, lost agency.

Russian people lost their agency.

No, their agency was taken away.

We were robbed of our ability

and to use instruments

that were technically available back then.

It is unreasonable to expect that

every person and every generation

would be as brave as Navalny is,

And would go and actually

fight and risk everything.

It is not a reasonable ask.

What happened in Russia is that

from probably late 90s,

in a pre-Putin era,

and with Putin it just accelerated massively,

and very complex

and very multi-dimensional

brainwashing project has started.

I'm going to drop the TV propaganda

because that's what it is.

Yes, they have taken every single mass media

the country, TV, print, internet,

everything is gone, right?

But that's obvious.

But they were doing much

more subtle things as well.

And when I was a student

in Moscow State University,

and although I was studying political science,

I was at the Sociology Department, but we did a lot

of courses on political science as well,

and those people who have elected

their courses related to politics, they

were taught that politics is not cool.

I was there in Moscow State University

at the subdepartment of government,

so where the future government

officials are being raised,

I was a student of that and I was told

politics is dirty.

You know, like politics are just

about running a campaign for someone.

But then it's all about money.

We just need to

join United Russia.

That will probably be the most

important employment vehicle.

And that will deliver you to the youth

department of United Russia first.

From there, it would jump start your career.

And by the age of thirty, you

will be a minister of something.

There were generations of people

who were brainwashed

that voting is embarrassing.

Like you seriously went

to vote? That's just boring.

Don't do that.

While voting and participating in

political life was cool the whole time.

And nobody explained this.

So I think that the change has happened

on so many dimensions at the same time.

And specifically this ensures that

the decision makers, who

could have had agency

were deprived of that agency,

each in a separate way,

The majority of the country was deprived

of this agency by a very

simple instrument of poverty.

It's a basic economic concept, right?

And it's difficult to care

about the political rights

when you have nothing to eat, when

you have no way of covering your bills,

when you have to eat shitty food,

or which is not available.

You have to live in awful conditions,

sharing a one-bedroom apartment

between like five people inside,

and the house itself is in an emergency

state and needs to be demolished.

So the combination

of extreme poverty

makes people uninterested,

disappointment in politics and

politicians, because, you know,

we didn't have good ones. We

have never seen a real opposition.

We've never seen someone like

a little political star appearing

and uprising to power.

We've never had an example

of a good, honest minister,

who would be going on television.

Nemtsov?

Nemtsov was deprived of

that quite a while ago.

When was the last time that Nemtsov

actually had like a whole hour on TV?

I don't think it happened like after

Nemtsov was mentioned on TV,

but, you know, he was

laughed at. And he was used

as a figure of hahaha, liberal

opposition, this is what you get.

They were ridiculing him. And actually

in the end, they murdered him.

So I think that it's not about us

accidentally losing anything.

And yes, some people

perhaps were distracted,

by certain other things,

by building their careers, by earning

money and by all of that.

But there is an explanation to that.

And there is a legacy, and

there is a history of the nineties,

of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

There are so many factors that explain this.

I don't want to make Russian people,

I don't want to call us guilty and

say that we have missed something out.

No, it's a big fight and

it's a very difficult situation

where we ended up.

Again, thanks to Putin.

This is not our fault.

And I always discourage

people from victim blaming

in this specific situation. Who knows?

Could things have been different

in 2011 during the protests?

I don't know whether any of you had

been in Moscow during those days?

But I guarantee you, it felt very hopeful.

It felt like Navalny is about to [. . .]

at least the parliamentary election.

It felt like those crowds

would cross the bridge.

And maybe that was an opening.

Now it seems like it was possible.

But again, it's a very

hypothetical scenario.

I know your organization primarily focuses

on investigative journalism, and

publishing it and sharing it with people.

And people read the stories

and watch the videos. Then

what's the hope that happens next?

Do you see there being a political

path forward, a legal path

forward to overthrow the regime?

Or is the only option for

Russians to take back

the agency that they

were robbed off

with other forms that are outside of legal,

say, with violence or something like that?

Is there any path to overthrow the regime?

What do you hope is the outcome

of people watching those videos?

Obviously, there's emotional response,

but what sort of action is the objective?

If we knew the path to

overthrow Putin's regime,

we would just take that path

and overthrow the regime.

Okay, let's rule out one thing.

Putin is not going to be

overthrown in a legal way.

There isn't a way that

a certain number of laws

that he violated can be

used against him.

And The Hague is not going to.

Even if The Hague eventually,

the collective ICC court, started

a tribunal against Putin, I don't think

he's going to take that fight and go.

I mean, can he be voted out?

No, he cannot be voted out.

So then what options are left?

He cannot be voted out, because

he controls the electoral system

in its entirety.

So even if he is voted out, like physically

by people showing up

at the ballot stations

and submitting their ballots, they

now have a wonderful electronic voting

that overwrites any results

with a click of a button, right?

There isn't any way to

outvote him. Not in 2023.

We could have had this

conversation in 2014.

Perhaps it would be more

interesting and we could have

an exciting debate about it.

I don't know which way

it is going to go.

I think that it's going to be

quite quick and quite unexpected.

And our job, our collective job,

not just as Anti-Corruption Foundation,

but other political voices,

we need to create cracks in his regime.

Each person or each organization, should

be responsible for its very own crack.

We are building a crack,

while we are breaking it,

in the foundation in the

dimension of corruption.

So this is where we

are concentrating our

resources. Some other people

could be trying to build it

or develop this crack in other way by

I don't know, investigating

or reporting on war crimes,

or what happened in Bucha and all of that.

So you're trying to broaden this

crack by unveiling these corruption

scandals. And they are prosecuted?

So beside people understanding

that that is their president, what...?

The understanding on its own is very important

because that's not just an understanding.

It's a disappointment.

That's important.

That's an important feeling

that we need to create

because it's a process that

we have witnessed many times.

They see one investigation

and they're like: Okay, interesting.

Okay, that specific prosecutor

general is corrupt. Fine.

But he will be changed by

somebody else.

And then there is another one.

It all builds up

to a disappointment in the system,

which deserves disappointment.

That part is real, of course.

How that disappointment will be

channeled by these people after that?

Well, before the war, it was channeled

by people going to the streets.

And we see a very direct link there.

Those people in the streets

were standing there, I don't know,

in 2017 with yellow ducks, right?

From our investigation. In 2021, they

were protesting in the streets with

toilet brushes.

It's a reference. So there is a clear link.

We see how disappointment

transfers in people to

the most basic political action,

which is leaving your house

and going into the streets

and standing there, shouting something,

or holding a poster of some sort.

Ideally, if the system was healthy,

this would have transformed

into the government official

resining. Maybe small one.

Maybe it could have been a local

not even an MP, not even

from the State Duma,

not from the state parliament,

maybe from a city parliament,

but that, in a healthy system,

leads to the crisis of,

I don't know, that parliamentary

party, on a regional level.

That's in a health system.

It escalates to other things.

So all the way to the president level.

that's how it should work. And

we are not being stupid, unreasonable,

or too hopeful, like that's the theory.

This is how the healthy system works.

But we because our system is unhealthy,

we are having hiccups

in this chain of events, right?

So we do step zero.

We do step one, two, three.

Then there is a hiccup.

Instead of addressing the

people who are protesting

in the streets, they're being arrested

and beaten up and imprisoned.

Okay, it's broken.

Eventually, can this thing be fixed?

Yes, it can.

Because if 1 million people gets into the streets,

they won't be able to arrest all of them.

So we know and see the chain

of events that can be effective.

We're moving through it

as well as we can.

And I can only feel sorry for

the fact that we aren't more effective

in moving into it.

But we will keep trying

for as long as it takes us.

I feel I have to advertise.

Dan has a great article

on a path the regime

[. . .] in Foreign Affairs

from October last year.

Essentially, in a similar way

the Soviet Union [. . .],

the lack of resources

or desire of people to participate

in any kind of activity.

And that I guess, contributed.

I think it's very important to acknowledge

that, you know, the fact that

Ukrainian people did not close their agency.

Putin probably is the biggest

impact on their regime, right?

[. . .] the war, where you

see the biggest sacrifice

by Ukrainian people with the financial

and military support from other countries.

And that could be the biggest factor.

I had a sort of related and

somewhat unpleasant question,

But perhaps an important one. And this is related

to how Soviet Union collapsed, right?

The person who came, was actually Yeltsin,

from very much within Soviet Union, right?

So if defeat of the regime would require

a coalition with a highly unpleasant person,

you know, for example

a person who was

described in many of your investigations,

would a coalition with a highly

unpleasant person be possible?

Or do you see that it has to be a pure break

without any type of compromises

and coalitions of that sort?

Again, unpleasant in what way?

Sobyanin is unpleasant because I cannot erase

an image of him standing on United Russia

forum and shouting: Putin, Putin.

He was shouting for 2 minutes.

That image doesn't go

away from my eyes.

So he's unpleasant and

he has been instrumental

in Putin's regime for decades.

He was in administration

ages ago. He was governor of the region

and now he's the mayor of Moscow forever.

And then he's going to be

reelected this autumn again.

Prigozhin is unpleasant

in a very different way.

He's a mass murderer and

I don't even know what tribunal

tries these sorts of crimes.

So I don't think that either of

these options are possible.

It's would be very hypocritical of us

to first calling them out

and being instrumental

to Putin's regime

[inaudible]

Let's all go, have a coffee and

plot how to overtake Putin.

He is not going to overtake Putin.

It is very important to keep in mind, and

draw conclusions from lessons from history.

What we learned from history

of the Soviet Union's collapse

is that probably the biggest

mistake that was made

It was the lack of

restrictions, right?

No one,

including Yeltsin being the best example,

as charming and as charismatic

as he could have been in early 1980s,

He was coming directly

from the Communist Party.

And the team that he started to soon

appoint to the key

parts of the new Russia,

they were coming directly from [inaudible].

They were not just members

of Communist Party,

leaders of Communist Party.

So that mistake should

have not been done.

And we should not repeat it.

I don't think that the scenario where

I would be comfortable making a coalition

with anybody involved in higher

management of the United Russia Party.

I don't think that this is the way forward

and I think that this is dangerous.

And that we can end up

in the system rebuilding

itself pretty quickly.

And it is our responsibility

not to allow that.

At the very same time,

I am not... I don't live

in the world of fairy tales and unicorns.

I understand that sometimes in order to

make an important political event happen,

you need to share a table, you need

to negotiate, you need to talk

to very unpleasant people.

I personally am not

going to talk to criminals.

I don't have enough

compromising powers in me

to be able to negotiate with

someone, who killed Nemtsov

or poisoned Navalny. I've seen

Navalny dying right in front of me.

And trust me.

This is not a pleasant experience.

I don't think that there are words

that these people can tell me

after these events, that would make

me forgive them and forget them.

And I'm sure there are other

people within the system,

who aren't as complicit

and who weren't as involved.

And these people potentially

can be involved in

building the beautiful

Russia of the future.

But again, when we are talking about

actually overthrowing Putin's

regime, a dramatic, quick action

that someone would be willing to do,

again, this is a completely

different scenario.

And perhaps this table of

potential personalities

that we can deal with

is wider as long as they

deliver the the main objective.

We have time for one last

question. Gentlemen over there.

Thank you very much.

You are very transparent

with your thoughts.

My question is, for example,

my understanding that the information

which is delivered to Russia at this

point is mostly through YouTube, right?

Right.

YouTube is the only unblocked

social network. Facebook is gone,

Twitter is gone, Instagram is gone.

If Russian government decides

to ban YouTube or any other outlet,

what's your plan of action?

I think they will ban YouTube.

I think they will.

I've been changing my forecast

on that one quite a bit.

So if we were here a year ago,

I think I would have told you that

YouTube is probably going

to stay, they're too scared.

I know that they did their polls.

They've ran the polls, Kremlin polls,

on popularity of YouTube.

I've seen the results of those polls

and they wouldn't allow any,

even partial blockage of YouTube because

it was mainly used for [...] purposes.

It was huge, it had like 80 million

views or something like that.

And this was mostly by

people, who are substituting

bad television that Russia has,

with easily accessible,

readily available

content such as Masha

and the Bear cartoon,

that can be played on repeat for

kids and you're free for 2 hours, right?

Or entertainment in terms

of comedy shows, right?

Comedy, TV shows, standup comedy etc.

The version that you get on YouTube

is more fun, is less censored, etc.

Huge audiences,

huge numbers of views, etc.

So I thought that a year ago,

I would have told you no.

They are very scared.

YouTube penetrates into

audiences that are so apolitical

that you kind of don't want

to make them angry.

You don't want to

get them involved

and want them to question,

how come my cooking

channel is not accessible

anymore, right?

I want to make my "syrniki" and

I don't have a recipe anymore.

But now the situation is different.

We started noticing, because

we have a network of our own

YouTube channels,

we started noticing that the Kremlin

and the president administration

and specifically VKontakte,

so the social network that originally

was created as a copycat of Facebook,

it used to belong to oligarch [. . .]

now it belongs to President

Putin, his closest friends.

They have started an

unprecedented campaign

for like purchasing

TV shows, YouTube shows,

and they have bought the biggest

available comedy production label,

which carries the most watched

comedy shows on YouTube.

So they have purchased quite

a few independent vloggers.

By purchased, I mean, they have offered the

money to transfer their show from YouTube

to VKontakte, hypothetical VKontakte platform.

It doesn't exist yet.

It hasn't been released yet.

We're not talking about [. . .]

[. . .] failed. That's not happening,

but VKontakte is clearly doing something

and we keep hearing from unrelated

different corners of media universe

that: oh, I received an offer to release

my standup comedy show first

on this platform, and

the day after on YouTube.

So they're still allowed to use

YouTube, but just like a day later.

And millions of dollars are being spent.

And the offer that is currently in the market

to big vloggers and YouTubers is that

they are being paid double of what

whatever advertising revenue they

get organically from YouTube, right?

So you get double the money. And

this is a lot of money, right?

You can make cash on YouTube.

And that's a tempting offer, and we

keep hearing that people are taking it.

Musicians, vloggers, pop stars

are going to release their clips

elsewhere and not on YouTube.

And I think that signals that they're

trying to gradually phase out YouTube.

And once the most popular

shows are gone, or at

least available elsewhere,

this is when they're going to start

perhaps slowing it down,

first like they did with

other social networks.

And then completely

blocking it eventually.

Please join me in thanking

Maria for an amazing discussion.

Thank you so much for coming.

And good luck in the future with everything.