Волков – что происходит с ФБК / вДудь

Leonid, wait... Wait... So what is your responsibility for... You are being a software tester. Thieves! Corrupt! Someone not worthy working with. I feel like I'm one of the most hated people on the Internet.

Luba, we don't have money... I can't believe this. I swear! How is this different from what Putin's authorities do? I'm ready and you're not. Is there something wrong with me or with you? It's an interesting question... We have some time...

Please subscribe to our Telegram channel before watching this interview. We would stay in touch with you while YouTube is being blocked in Russia. We are uploading all of our video on Telegram, too. Here is the channel name. I will leave the link in the description.

Leonid, we reached out to you in October... We couldn't figure out our schedules until January. I felt like you're one of the busiest people that we've had on our show in eight years. You would only have 1.5 free days a month. What were you doing all this time?

I was working. Leonid Volkov, 44 years old, a politician, Alexei Navalny's associate. Born in Yekaterinburg. I'm quite used to a busy schedule. I've been cautious with my planning for a few years already. Last fall I was doing two jobs at the same time. I was still doing my work at ACF and I also worked as a visiting professor in a small university called Wesleyan University.

I was reading lectures in this university and this was an extremely interesting experience for me. It was a full-time job and it took all of my time. Eight academic hours a week doesn't sound like a lot... But I would also prepare for my classes, check the home assignments, drive to the university, and have some consultations with the students. It was a full-time job.

Earlier today I went to the I94 website... This site allows you to go through your travel history in the US. I entered my birth date and my ID number and it showed how many times I had crossed the American border. I have entered and left America seven times in the last four months. I crossed the border fourteen times. This was a crazy schedule... I fell ill in the last months... I had my regular job, my new job, and I also visited Europe seven times... I visited several conferences and public events.

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Back to the interview. So how did you get invited as a visiting professor? It all started with... We have some time, right? In 2010, Alexei Navalny took part in the Yale World Fellows program. This is an international fellowship program for young leaders. Alexei loved this program and talked about this experience a lot. He was a big fan of education... We would often talk about studying and learning something new.

He wrote a letter of recommendation for me and I managed to get accepted in 2018. This was very important for me and I went to study at this program in late 2018. In 2022, my wife and I visited the 20th anniversary of the program. There were many alumni at the event... They left three empty chairs for the alumni who were imprisoned for their political views. These were Alexei Navalny, Felix Maradiaga from Nicaragua, and Hakan Altunaj from Turkey.

In the following 1.5 years, they were all no longer prisoners. Alexei got murdered and the other two got released. My wife Anya and I were walking around New Haven, which is a beautiful town... And we said that four years ago we were still young and silly... We didn't realize that this program could give us so many opportunities... We were sorry that we couldn't enter the program for the second time.

And then I told her: why don't you apply? She said come on! But I told her she could do it. I believe in my wife, she is a very smart and nice person. She applied for the program and got rejected. There were about 4 thousand applicants for only 16 places available. I told her to apply again in the next year.

She applied again... In March 2024, a week after I got assaulted... I couldn't walk yet... My leg and my arm hurt a lot and I had a lot of bruises. And she got a call from Yale and they told her she got accepted. They were aware that I was assaulted and said that they would be glad to have her if she could come to Yale.

In 2018, we had one kid and Yale gave us a tiny apartment... Now we have three kids. Our family got much bigger. We can no longer stay in the same flat. We need more bedrooms. I asked the university if they could rent a bigger apartment for us and they said no. I realized that we would have to rent a house. Which is very expensive.

How much is that? We were paying 3500$ a month for a very small house. I needed to make some money. The scholarship was equal to 5000$. It was a little silly to spend it on rent. $5000 in four months or monthly? Monthly. And the rent cost $3500 monthly.

So we would either send Anya to the US alone for four months... Or I would find a job in the US to make some money while she studies. When I studied at Yale in 2018, I was invited to a few universities to be a visiting professor. Some of them would pay me and others wouldn't. I went through all of these emails and replied to them.

Dear Sir, we met six years ago and I really like working with you... I'm going to Connecticut again because my wife is a Fellow now... We are the first couple in the history of the World Fellow program. So I asked them if they had a job for me. This nice person, Professor Peter Rutland, that I met six years ago when he taught Russian politics at Wesleyan University... Replied to me: I'm on a sabbatical. Can you replace me?

I was glad to be invited. It turned out that I had to have two classes to get the salary. So I created another course... In August 2018, we arrived in Connecticut and Anna went to Yale, while I worked at Wesleyan University in Middletown. I was a visiting professor of practice and I was teaching two classes to third and fourth-year students: Russian Politics and Nonviolent Resistance against Dictatorships.

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Back to the interview. In the Spring of 2023, everyone found out that you secretly supported Fridman and Alfa Group in their fight against the sanctions. You told Ira Shikhman why you did it... I'll leave the link in the description below... I wouldn't like to talk about this case again... I would like to ask you something else related to it...

You admitted being wrong. You said: 'I have made a decision to take a break from my public and political work as an ACF co-chairman.' 'Soon we are going to make a decision about my future in the foundation with my colleagues.' 'We will see if they still want to work with me.' So how long did this break last?

Not a co-chairman, I was a chairman. I was the ACF Chairman. I resigned immediately... Now Maria Pevchikh is the new Chairman. This break went on for about three weeks. During these three weeks, we talked about moving forward... We were still able to contact Alexei... It took some time for him to receive our letters. We cared about his opinion on this issue.

If you remember correctly, Alexei posted a letter to me about this whole situation. He was mad at me but he also praised me for admitting my mistakes. He said that people rarely take responsibility for their mistakes. He wanted me to stay in the team in a new role. So we made a new role for me... I can no longer work with sanctions.

People would always be suspicious if I continued working on sanctions. We had a sanctions department that I was a part of. I left this department. I could no longer make decisions on putting anyone on or off the sanctions list that we would suggest. I used to meet Western politicians and suggest putting people on the list and creating a mechanism to exclude them from the list.

I still believe that the sanctions policy failed because there was no way to exit the list. We will talk about it later. I'm no longer involved in this work. Now Maria is responsible for it. And now you're focused on your Russian projects. I know.

Alexei Navalny wrote about the rules that he wanted to stick to. 'One of these rules is the manager's responsibility for their decisions.' 'Such responsibility is not common in Russia...' So what responsibility did you take for your actions? My role in the organization has changed. I'm no longer the head of the organization. I'm now working on other projects.

I can't say that I'm doing a completely different job now... But it's different. I've got to say that I suffered a lot from my supporters and my opponents. It's been two years already... These are reputation costs... Wait, these are reputation costs. You said that you have a different position now. And you're now working on other projects.

However, you're still one of the leaders of the ACF. This is true. Pevchikh, Zhdanov, and Volkov are still the leaders of the organization. It looks like nothing has changed for you aside from your position. I'm now working on other tasks. I used to meet Borrell when I was the head of ACF. I am no longer invited to such meetings. This is quite painful for me.

We had a discussion and we talked about having three leaders in the organization. We faced a crisis of confidence. My colleagues were mad at me for signing the paper secretly. They could no longer trust me. I apologized and told them I would never do this again. We introduced sequential numbering for all our letters to make sure that nobody secretly sends a letter from our company.

And we also introduced new policies... I guess some people would feel like I haven't taken full responsibility for my actions. You have taken zero responsibility. I don't feel this way. Look... Let me be nerdy. Leonid Volkov used to be a top manager of ACF. He got involved in a scandal. Everyone admitted that he should take the responsibility.

I asked you about the responsibility and you said that you were still one of the heads of the organization. It looks like you took zero responsibility. The organization worked on a variety of projects. ACF, our international entity, was one of these projects. We created ACF in the fall of 2021. We decided to work on our international projects in 2022.

We wanted to work on sanctions lobbying and so on... And then the war began. The full-scale invasion happened on February 24. A lot of our activities were scrapped because of it. We were planning to develop a global anti-corruption organization. And I would be the head of this organization. After February 24, we would mostly work on the sanctions list.

We felt like it was the most important thing that we could do. We could apply our knowledge of Putin's elites to introduce sanctions effectively. I spent the whole year working on lobbying sanctions. After the Fridman-gate, I could no longer do this work. I hope that once the war is over this project would be fulfilled as it was intended in 2021. It seems like I wouldn't be able to work there anymore. For me, this is a lot of responsibility.

How is this different from what Putin's authorities do? When they're involved in a scandal, they would take a short break and then come back to their work with the same level of power. I don't have the same level of power that I used to have. Are you making key political decisions in ACF? Three of us are making these decisions. Just like you used to. Yes, like we used to.

It all changed after February 16, 2024... We would always get Alexei's approval of our decisions. Now we're getting Yulia's approval. However, I can't make decisions on certain projects. My power suffered quite significantly. I admitted my mistake and spoke about it in multiple interviews. I explained why I made this mistake... As an organization, we introduced a mechanism to avoid similar situations in the future. This matters, too.

Do you feel like people were expecting you to leave the organization? Some people felt like I would leave the organization... They didn't understand the difference between our organization and our international project. We failed to explain the difference to some people. Alexei wrote that Leonid would pick a new project in the organization. This meant that I wouldn't leave the organization.

I've been reading this in the comments for the last two years... 'What is he doing here? Hasn't he left the organization?' Some of these comments are written by bots, and some - by real people that didn't understand our actions in the Spring of 2023. This was unavoidable. People don't have to read all of our texts and to be aware of our organizational structure. I don't have any problems with them.

Some of them felt like I had left the organization. When they saw me on our YouTube channel, they were surprised to see me there. There is no way to fix this... We're consuming a lot of information every day. Some things are too hard to explain to everyone. This happens a lot. People remember what I did wrong but they don't remember how I reacted to my mistake.

You could have made a noble move and left the organization. People are still questioning why you haven't left. Don't you feel like leaving the organization in 2023 would be good both for you and the organization? This would definitely be good for me. I would have a lot of free time to make some money... For the organization... Alexei didn't want me to leave. This is unclear from his letter.

Let me read it out loud. 'It's up to Leonid to decide what he's going to do next.' 'We're not a government-owned company. We are a private organization of volunteers.' 'Kremlin calls us extremists and we would always welcome a professional that Leonid has proven to be.' When I read this two years ago, I felt like you were leaving the organization.

He said that I would still be a part of this organization... This is unclear. We would always welcome a professional that Leonid has proven to be... For me, this means 'we will welcome him some day in the future.' I talked to him about it... He wrote: 'Congratulations, Leonid. You will no longer have to meet all these officials. You will now have a lot of free time.'

We talked about starting the agitation project and talking to Russians by phone. He really wanted to work on this project but we didn't have enough time to do it. So he wrote that I would now have enough time to work on it instead of meeting the politicians. He wanted me to stay in the organization.

We all make mistakes but I was still a part of this group of people. I knew that I was responsible for a lot of stuff in the organization: fundraising, managing the company, introducing new projects... I considered leaving the organization. But I also realized that it would damage the organization. It would be hard for them to recover from me leaving.

We don't know what would happen had I left. They could have been much better without me working in the organization. However, I still believe... I believe that the system of checks and balances that Alexei introduced... Me, Ivan, and Maria are very different from each other. We spend a lot of time arguing with each other.

Alexei introduced this system and it has worked for four years already. We managed to keep the organization going. It proves that this system is valuable. In March of 2023, I suffered a lot but Alexei told us that he wanted to keep this system. I don't feel like I can't be replaced.

The culture of Alexei's organization is based on raising talent. Alexei would approach our employees and offer them to start a new project. He would promote them. He would promote our employees in different cities... He would also promote the young politicians. He told Lubov Sobol to become a politician instead of being a lawyer.

I feel like we managed to keep this corporate culture. We have a lot of new guys in the organization who are getting more significant now. We want them to take part in decision-making. We need the change of power. The three of us won't run the company forever. But it is what it is now.

You sound exactly like Putin. Why couldn't you leave if you had a lot of talented people to replace you? Let me say this again. This decision was made by Alexei. I talked to my colleagues and we agreed that I could stay. I don't know if we were wrong or right. I feel like we've had a few successes in the last two years. I took part in most of these projects and I'm proud of them.

Since 2021, you're not publishing your annual ACF financial report. Why? We were announced an extremist organization in 2021. Working with us is officially prohibited. Any donation to our company is a crime. This relates to Russians donating from Russia. People are being prosecuted for donating money to us. They are also being prosecuted retrospectively for donating to our company before 2021.

There is a person who donated from abroad and got arrested when he came back to Russia. His last name is Malyarevsky. This is a terrible case... Everything that is related to our income is now a very sensitive topic. We are very unstable in terms of finance. We're hardly surviving the last couple of years. If we publish our financial report, we will hint at our weaknesses.

We would disclose our main sources of income... This would potentially make us weaker. We talked about it two weeks ago during a 2025 budget session. We see that we are being criticized for the lack of transparency. We decided to talk about it with our employees. We held a meeting where we democratically voted... A horrifying laugh. I'm sorry. This is our inside joke.

An effective political organization should have a vertical structure because there are always a lot of projects to work on. You are getting ready for the elections which are in two months from now... This is a well-known fact... When you're introducing democracy to a political organization, it all falls apart.

Does dictatorship work? It's not a dictatorship. Authoritarianism. This is corporate-style management. So you decided to vote... We don't usually vote in our organization... This time we decided to ask our employees. Everyone agreed that both scenarios are bad but disclosing our source of income would be even worse.

Let me give you an example. Mikhail Khodorkovsky gave an interview to Yulia Latynina and he said that he would find all the sponsors of ACF and convince them to stop sponsoring the organization. This is quite a big threat. This is how I remember your financial reports... I might be wrong... It was a PDF file with total expenses broken into items. Wages, legal expenses, IT support (it was equal to zero, by the way)... That's it.

There was no source of income disclosed in the report. How can't you now prepare a slide with your expenses? People would ask us where we got the money from... We're spending almost 80% of our expenses on salaries and taxes. We're paying a lot of taxes in Lithuania. Most of our employees work from Lithuania. So 80% of our expenses are salaries and taxes... The rest... It doesn't make a lot of sense to break them into items...

There's rent... Some travel expenses... And IT expenses. We have quite a lot of projects that require paying for the servers... As well as our YouTube production. 80% from what amount? What are your yearly expenses? Our annual budget is about six million Euro.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky told us he was spending much less money on his media than you. He said he was spending from two to five million Euro a year. We're not only spending on media... I would say that we're only spending about 40% of our money on YouTube. So what are the rest of the people doing? We have lawyers, sociologists, IT specialists... We have SMM designers... And, of course, the investigations department.

Isn't this also related to media? It's not. Sociologists are not related to media. What about working on the sanctions list? What about the Black Diary? These are not media activities. We're spending about 40% of our money on our three YouTube channels. Our biggest difference from Khodorkovsky is that he cares too much about our expenses.

He's talked about it a few times. We don't care about his money. We're not investigating him. We don't care how much he spends on his media. We don't care about him unless his friends stalk us and assault us with hammers. We're trying to stay focused on Russian politics and on fighting Putin. We are focused on ending Putinism and the war. Mikhail Khodorkovsky cares about our expenses too much.

Aren't you focused on him, too? We're not. We'll talk about it later. How does your family make money? We have several sources of income. I have a salary in ACF. What is your salary? We're singing NDAs. You don't have to tell us.

When I started working for Alexei full-time in March of 2015 when Boris Nemtsov got murdered... I quit my job in IT and decided to work for Alexei full-time. He said that he couldn't pay me a competitive salary. He asked me if I was fine with it. I said I'd figure it out. From 2015 to 2019, I was not getting paid by ACF.

In August 2019, we were forced to leave Russia to avoid prison. We moved to Lithuania and we had to get a residence permit. The easiest way to do it is to find a job in Lithuania. Since November 2019, I have been officially hired by my legal entity. I'm getting paid the minimum wage required for a residence permit. What kind of legal entity is this? This used to be my own legal entity... Eventually, when we relocated our employees to Lithuania, we hired them by the same legal entity.

We are paying salaries from this entity. What does this entity do? This is a non-profit organization. Since 2019, I'm getting paid by ACF... I'm paid a minimum wage required for my residence permit. Next. Since 2012 or 2013, two people that I've known from Yekaterinburg have been supporting me. I've known them since I was a deputy in Yekaterinburg.

They liked what I did there and they were willing to support me. In 2015, I decided to leave my job in IT and told these people I would pursue a career in politics. I wouldn't be making a lot of money in this organization... I needed to support my family and my ex-wife... I said that I would accept their support if they had no impact on what I did.

One of them supported me until 2021. Another one supported me until the summer of 2024. He retired and told me he could no longer support me. I'm very thankful to both of them. These two private entrepreneurs... They're not very wealthy... And they cared about what I was doing so much that they supported me financially.

This income was quite significant for me for a long time. This was a personal grant system. Yes. Exactly. You did not provide them with any services. I did not have any obligations. Why would they support you? To support the Beautiful Russia of the Future? They believed in me and in Russia of the Future. Did they live in Russia? I can't talk about it.

I have already said too much about it. I don't want to help Russian authorities find these kind people. This was one of my sources of income. I also have my side project that I launched in 2015. It is called Internet Protection Society. I founded it together with Sergei Boiko and Mikhail Klimarev. This is a non-profit organization that studied the Russian segment of the Internet.

We're also providing analytical reviews and different research. We're mostly selling our services to Western NPOs who are studying the Russian Internet. Do they pay you for these services? They do. They hire us as consultants. They're paying you for consultations. Yes. This has also been a significant source of income for me.

This is my third source of income. The fourth one is some part-time jobs. In Russia, I would make money from IT consulting. I had some customers from my past... Big Russian companies. Before 2010, I was a top manager of a big IT company. Until 2015, I was a top manager of a big international company. I used to be a big name in the industry.

I would be hired as a consultant... After August of 2020, they would no longer offer me any jobs. After Alexei got poisoned, I could no longer find a job in consulting. I spent much more time working for ACF. I never wanted to work half-assed. I always wanted to help my customers with a new strategy or a new product. I stopped working in IT consulting in 2020.

When Alexei came back to Russia and got arrested in 2021, me, Ivan, and Maria suddenly became responsible for the organization. We weren't looking for this attention. Before 2021, we would hide behind Alexei's back. We were all doing our job but Alexei was the big boss in the organization. We faced a lot of extra work when he was sent to prison.

It could no longer be a part-time job. I really enjoyed working in consulting. It was a lot of fun to learn about different businesses and to give them my advice. After 2021, I would make extra money from some specific projects. In 2022, I published a book called Putinland. I made over 50 thousand Euro from this book. This book was a bestseller in Germany for seven weeks.

Did you write it in Russian? I wrote the book in German. Did you actually write it in German? I did... Well... It's a long story... I dictated the book in Russian, the interpreter wrote it in German and then I edited the German text. I don't have the Russian text... I only have a German version of the text. Would you mostly sell the book in Germany? Yes, I would.

We sold about 26 thousand copies. So you made money from the book. And I was also giving lectures. How much does your lecture cost? It depends on the customer... I would usually get 1500-2000 Euro per lecture in a university. I would even tour around the US with my lecture when I needed to make some money. I just came back from working as a visiting professor where I made some money.

This is a sensitive topic and I apologize for talking about it for so long... It is a very interesting topic. This is a real problem. I have to think about my income all the time. Recently I agreed to be a visiting professor in one university next fall. In the US? No, it's a European university. I have to think about making more money all the time.

I can't be making enough money from working for ACF. My wife works for ACF, too, by the way. ACF can't afford paying me a competitive salary. ACF can't afford paying IT specialists a competitive salary. Almost all of them work for free or agree to get a minimum salary... I don't want to depend on ACF so I'm making money from other projects.

I also have some savings. I used to be quite a wealthy person. I don't want to spend my savings now. I really want to save them for my kids in case something happens to me. I don't want to spend any of this money. Konstantin Eggert interviews Ivan Zhdanov a couple of months ago and said that you lived in a luxury area in Vilnius.

And later Evgeny Chichvarkin said that you bought the house before it was built. And you said that you are renting a house in Vilnius. When we moved to Lithuania in 2019, we were looking for a flat to rent. We were choosing from a flat in the city center and a house in the suburbs. We didn't want to live in the suburbs... We finally decided to rent a house because we needed to have more space...

And it proved to be a good choice during the pandemic. We lived in a forest and we could go for a walk during a strict lockdown in Lithuania. We stayed in this house for four years. We lived in a village 20 kilometers away from the city center. Renting this house was cheaper than renting a flat in Vilnius.

1.5 years ago we moved to a prestigious area because our son goes to school in this area. We didn't want to spend an hour driving him to school. We're paying more for a smaller house now... We picked this house because it's located closer to our son's school. I think this would be familiar to a lot of parents. This is common.

So what house did you buy in pre-construction? We live in the smallest house on the street. I did not buy any houses in pre-construction. I don't own a house in Lithuania. In 2021, we spent some part of my savings to buy a flat in Vilnius. We applied for a mortgage and bought this flat. Now we're lending it. This is also a source of our income.

Did it cost 125 thousand Euro? It didn't. It cost 260 thousand. Where did you get this number from? RT wrote an article about it... RT made it up. So if anything happens to me, my family would sell this flat and pay for my kid's education. How much are you paying for rent now? Three thousand.

Another question about real estate. When you worked in Luxembourg, you said that you bought a house there. Paying a mortgage was cheaper than renting a house there. What happened to this house? My ex-wife and my eldest daughter live there. I've got to explain it. I have four kids. Two kids with my ex-wife and two kids with my current lovely wife.

My older son lives with us now. At some point, 1.5 years ago, he decided to move to me. So he moved from Luxembourg to Vilnius. How old was he? 14. So he's 16 now... He's 15.5 now. He even went to the US with us. This is his decision. My ex-wife was okay with it. I was okay with it. And my current wife was okay with it.

So now we have three kids in our house. In 2013, I moved to Luxembourg after working at Alexei's headquarters. I sold my flat in Yekaterinburg and paid the first installment for my mortgage. It is a thirty-year mortgage that I'm still paying out. This is a part of my alimony. This house belongs to my ex-wife. I'm paying for the mortgage.

So why did your son decide to move to his father during his teenage years? A teenage soul is a mystery. Did he explain this to you? He did. He didn't have Russian-speaking friends in Luxembourg. At some point, he felt like he needed friends. He has a lot of friends here in Vilnius now. He goes to a French school here in Vilnius and there are many Russian-speaking kids there.

He's met a lot of friends here and I'm happy for him. He's much more social now. He wanted to live with his dad because he's interested in what I do. He even went to a protest in Berlin. He's following the news. He's not into politics... He's into social life. And he enjoys learning about it from me.

You also took part in the Programming World Championship. We wrote a post about it on our Telegram. This contest took place in 2001. Tomasz Chaika took part in it among Nikolay Durov, who won the contest, and you. You represented the University of Ural and took the 18th place. Nikolay Durov won this contest. Do you know him personally?

I've seen him and we know each other... I texted him in 2015 or 2016 when VK was still good. I asked him a couple of questions and he replied. I can't say that we're friends. Nikolay Durov is the brain behind VK and Telegram, which are promoted by his brother Pavel Durov. What do you know about him? He's a great programmer. He was a great contester. He won the contest twice.

This is a very competitive sport. There are hundreds of thousands of people in this sport. It's really hard to get to the finals. I feel like curling and archery are less popular than collegiate programming. It's probably easier to become an Olympic champion in curling or archery than to win this contest twice. He's also a great professional programmer. He's created VK and Telegram.

What did you do at the contest? I competed for five years and then I became a coach and a promoter... There are three people in the team. They get one PC... It all started in the 1970s when PCs were in deficit. They need to have a strategy on how they would spend their time. It is all happening in one room. There are fifty or a hundred teams... Sometimes there would be over 130 teams.

All teams get the same tasks. There are about 10-12 tasks overall. The teams are given five hours to solve the tasks. The team that solves the most tasks wins. Are they solving problems? They should write a code to solve the problem. I wrote quite a lot of such tasks that you can google. Sometimes people ask me if I wrote these tasks.

This is a very competitive sport. It was less competitive 25 years ago. Nowadays a pro team would be training almost every day. They would be training for 20 hours a week. Four days a week? Yes, they would spend 20 hours a week practicing. They would also read some books... And they're not students only? When I was playing, only students were allowed... And now there are contests for non-students, too.

This used to be a collegiate sport. The most prestigious contest is still the world collegiate contest. However, there are also contests for non-students. How nerdy are these events? These are not nerdy at all. People who work in teams have to be good at communicating. You can't win just because you have a genius on your team. This genius won't have enough time to solve all the tasks.

A good team would always beat him. So it's usually very competitive and loud at such events. There's a lot of passion... People are writing the code on the paper while the computer is busy. We're working on a new task while the jury is checking our previous task... And then we have to fix the problem... My partner gets mad at me... This is a very interesting sport that used to be a big part of my life.

You said that the biggest donation to ACF was equal to 750 thousand dollars. This is true. Some American man was inspired by the documentary and decided to donate this amount to ACF. He's a friend of an actor... There was a Hollywood actor... I can't remember his name now... I don't watch a lot of movies... So this Hollywood actor liked the movie and sent us 25 thousand.

Wasn't this Cumberbatch? No, not him. This actor published a tweet about the movie and his donation... And a friend of his saw this tweet and sent us 750 thousand. This was an outstanding donation. We've never received a similar one. Would you contact the person who donated you this amount? We wrote him a letter of appreciation and offered to meet him. He didn't reply. I've never met him.

We are talking about money a lot. Money is a tabooed topic in Russian politics. Political organizations are being accused of receiving grants from the US and from Russian oligarchs. I am willing to talk about the money now. It is a part of the job of a person responsible for fundraising. Meeting the donors, having dinners with them, answering their questions... Attracting new donors...

Any American NPO has a person who does such a job. All public members of these companies would meet the donors and look for new donors. This has been a big part of my job for many years. This is a very difficult job. You get to meet a lot of people. You have to answer their questions. This work requires a lot of discipline... I've got to remember about our principles and know where to draw the line.

Here are our principles: we are thankful to our donors. We're always thankful to our donors. We wouldn't be around without these people. It doesn't care if they donate 10$ or 50 thousand. We care about all of our donors. At the same time, donors have no influence on us. This is the difference between grants and donations. You receive a grant to do a certain task. It's not up to you to decide how to spend it.

You are given a grant to, say, create an ACF branch in Kazakhstan. Some person gives us a million dollars to open a branch in Kazakhstan. This is unacceptable for us. This would mean that another person or organization has some power over us. We love our donors and we always answer their questions... However, they can never have any influence on what we do.

Any donations, whether it's ten dollars or ten thousand dollars, is a donation that we would spend on what we want. If you like something that we do, you can donate us money and we would continue our work. Does ACF receive any grants? After 2021, when we were announced an extremist organization and we lost our donations from Russia... We have started to receive money from institutional donors...

Are these grants? No. These are donations from organizations. We are now sponsored by crowdfunding, which is the most important part for us. Thank you all for your monthly donations. When we were still allowed to work in Russia, we had over 30 thousand monthly donors. Nowadays we have about four or five thousand. We can no longer accept donations from Russia.

This is your first source of income. Yes, the second one is the high net worth individuals. Wealthy people who support us with their donations. And the third one? These people are mostly not Russian. They are just wealthy people who liked Alexei and the documentary or the book. And then there are institutional donors - organizations and foundations that donate their money to us.

The conditions are the same - we decide how to spend the donations. In the language of NPOs, this is called core support. This is basic support. We have never raised any money for a specific project. We would never announce what we're raising money for. We would only start a new project because it made sense to us as a political organization. This project must help us fight Putin.

Most of the institutional donors refuse to work this way. They mostly prefer to work with grants. Are any of these foundations related to the US government? This is quite funny. I don't see any problem with being sponsored by the US government... As long as we stay independent... Foundations related to the US government have very strict policies and one of them is 'we don't support the regime change.'

They can't support an organization that aims to change a political regime. Human rights activists, LGBT activists, independent media - no problem. Our organization is too political for them. I met some people from USAid and talked to them about donations... They would always say 'you should know that we cannot support you because we cannot support a regime change.'

'While ACF declared the regime change as their primary goal.' Would you accept their money if they were willing to donate? If anyone offers to donate money without any obligations from our side - we should not report, we spend the money on what we want... I would accept the donation from anyone. I have to say that some people in our organization disagree with me.

Some people find these unacceptable. Some of my colleagues find this unacceptable. This discussion does not make a lot of sense because we are not offered any money by the US government. How did a former YUKOS manager Konstantin Kagalovsky become an ACF donor? As well as many others, he was really sorry when Alexei got poisoned.

Alexei miraculously survived and we met a lot of new donors after the poisoning. When Alexei called one of the people who poisoned him... It was a very cinematic and a very touching story. It attracted a lot of new donors. They are donating money and we are thankful to them. Konstantin Kagalovsky was quite a big donor. From the Fall of 2020 until the Summer of 2022. Then he stopped supporting us.

I don't know why he did it. It's up to him. He had no power over what we did. Is it true that he donated about half a million dollars? I think that in almost two years he donated over half a million. About six or seven hundred thousand. Kagalovsky introduced the privatization mechanism. He agreed with his competitors to transfer YUKOS to Khodorkovsky. Kagalovsky constructed this whole privatization scheme.

So how could you make the Traitors series and take the money from him? This is great. He had no power over us. He couldn't tell us not to make this series. He couldn't tell us to cut him from the series. None of our donors have any power over our work. Maria would never think about losing a donor after an investigation. This is not how we work.

This makes us independent. Don't you see the contradiction? The series criticizes all these people who made money from privatization... And at the same time, you are sponsored by a person who organized this whole scheme. We have many thousands of donors... You are aware that he is one of your donors... One of the characters of your investigation is also one of your biggest sponsors.

I don't see any problem with this. It would be a problem if we decided not to publish the series. Let's talk about it now. Kagalovsky is not mentioned in the Traitors, right? Well, I think he's on one of the pictures... He's on a picture! A person who organized everything is on one picture. Khodorkovsky played a bigger role and we only talked about him for six minutes. Gusinsky only got a minute of screen time...

The Traitors isn't a show about the privatization. This is a show about what went wrong in the nineties and how Putin came to power. It is a show about the mistakes that Yeltsin's entourage made when they betrayed their values. I feel like the main character of the series is Valentin Yumashev. Yumashev and Yeltsin's family.

It looks like Kagalovsky donated you half a million dollars and you didn't mention him in the series about privatization. Anyone can read about privatization on Wikipedia... It looks like he bought your silence. I swear that nobody can buy our silence. This is how ACF works. The investigations department is making a video in a very close circle... Nobody has any power on what is going to be included in the video.

Maria tells these stories based on what she considers effective for achieving our goals. Maria knows who donates you money. She was aware that Kagalovsky paid ACF over half a million dollars. Right? It's an interesting question. We don't tell our managers about our biggest donors. Kagalovsky donated money to our US legal entity that published its financial report.

Our American and Lithuanian legal entities always publish their financial report. In 2021 and 2022, we were obliged to publish all the donors who donated over 5 thousand dollars. Kagalovsky was one of them. We've never talked about him with Maria. It doesn't matter if she considered him to be important enough for the series.

I'm not accusing you of taking the money for your silence. Even though it looks like you did. There is also another side to it. You could have excluded him from the series because you were thankful to him and not because he asked you to do it. There can be different reasons to do it... It's not true.

I have to say that Maria gets a lot of hate after giving the interview to you. She is being called a bolshevik... She's a unique person when it comes to sticking to her values... No one would ever approach her and ask her to cut a character from the investigation. She would get extremely mad at a person who asks her this. This doesn't need to look this way. Nobody has to ask her.

She would be just thankful to the donor and she wouldn't mention him in the investigation. If Kagalovsky stops supporting ACF, she wouldn't be able to pay salaries to her team. This is not true. None of our donors ever paid us over 15% of our income. We could never be dependent on a single donor. Would you be willing to accept a donation from Putin? No. Would you be willing to accept a donation from Khodorkovsky? No.

Why? Khodorkovsky doesn't give money with no obligations. We've seen this many times already. It turns out that we were so naive... We didn't notice it... Let me put it clearly... Last March I got assaulted. Last July we were contacted by Matus who told us that Leonid Nevzlin ordered the assault. He ordered to assault me, Ivan Zhdanov, and Maxim Mironov's wife.

We went through the evidence and it all became so clear... It turned out that there was a group of opinion leaders who would always defend Khodorkovsky and Nevzlin because they were sponsored by them in the past. If Khodorkovsky and Nevzlin ask them to say that two times two is fifteen... They would say that a video of an attack on Mironov's wife in Buenos Aires was made by AI in FSB. There are people who would actually say this.

It turns out that these people have always been like this. In the last two years, all these scandals around ACF... Claims that Navalny doesn't write his posts... Claims that we have a bot farm that we attack our opponents with... Claims that we are stealing the donations... It turns out that all these claims come from one source. All these claims were promoted in the same media by the same opinion leaders.

We should have noticed it much earlier. We only realized this last summer while we were investigating these assaults. We realized that Khodorkovsky and Nevzlin used their media to attack ACF. It turned out that they would donate money to media and then ask for some services. We were focused on Putin and Russia... I get it... We never paid attention to it until last August.

How could we not notice this? How could we not see it? Coming back to your question. I would not take any money from Khodorkovsky because he can't donate money with no obligations. It has become clear that he can't donate money without any obligations. What if he made a deal with you... or if he just sent you half a million dollars? Without any obligations.

Why can't he do it now? Our crypto wallets are available on our website. Anyone can send crypto to us. We would never find out who sent us the money. Is Kagalovsky's money different from Khodorkovsky's money? Kagalovsky never asked us to do anything. So what if Khodorkovsky sent you the money without any obligations? Would you accept the donation?

In 2020, I would. What about now? Now I wouldn't. I know him much better now. Would you take Kagalovsky's money today? I wouldn't. Why? Because I don't really know much about their relationship. You wouldn't take the money from him because he's close to Khodorkovsky? Yes. Not because he stole the money from Russians and broke the democracy?

I feel like we can no longer work with Kagalovsky after what he wrote... He edited the text fourteen times and he insulted Maria Pevchikh. He insulted her in a way that nobody should ever be insulted. So you don't care about him stealing the money during the events that you made a series about... You only care about him being close with your opponent and enemy Khodorkovsky? I do. Khodorkovsky is trying to destroy us.

I will keep thinking that this donation is a part of his plan to destroy us. My goal is to protect ACF. ACF is an organization founded by Alexei Navalny and my goal is to protect it. If Konstantin Kagalovsky suggests donating some money, I would ask him to apologize for his text... And I would refuse to take the money because of some hidden agenda implied.

He's retired a long time ago. In 2020, he decided to support us when Alexei got poisoned. I didn't see any hidden agenda in his actions back then. What if Yumashev offered you donations? I wouldn't accept them. Is he any different from Kagalovsky? Well, listen... We are now talking about hypothetical situations... This comes down to our moral values.

Now you're being a software tester. You are adding new limitations to the problem. There's Putin and there's an American businessman who liked our documentary. They are located on different sides of this spectrum. And there should be a line somewhere in between. I would take money from this person and I wouldn't take the money from that person.

So my answers are based on my spectrum. In fact, everything that is in the middle is not so obvious. My first reaction would be 'yes' but then I would think about it and change my mind. When I'm hesitant, I would talk to my colleagues and make a decision together with them.

When did you first meet Alexander Zheleznyak? I met him in the fall of 2018 when I was studying at Yale. He was living in Boston since 2015... I don't remember who introduced me to him. Was this a Russian-speaking person? Yes, it was. Was this an ACF employee? I don't remember.

I don't remember, really. I need to go through my emails. I was told that this man had some investigation to share. He brought some papers on Cherkalin and the Deposit Insurance Agency. He brought some evidence on how FSB and DIA announced banks' bankruptcy by Nabiullina's orders. They would first get rid of struggling banks and then they started blackmailing all banks.

I went through these papers... I'm not an expert in banking... I told him that I would send these papers to the investigations department. I feel like later Project and Medusa published their investigations based on the same information. They published investigations about Cherkalin and Miroshnikov blackmailing Russian banks.

In 2020, Navalny got poisoned and in 2021 he came back to Russia. This is when we began working with the Russian diaspora abroad. A lot of Russian emigrants were protesting when Alexei got arrested upon his arrival. This was the first time we saw such protests among Russian emigrants. I found out that Zheleznyak organized the protests in Boston. I was glad that he did it.

Later we were announced an extremist organization. This was a disaster for our crowdfunding. We needed to switch to Western crowdfunding as quickly as possible. We would need to have a legal entity abroad, a bank account, a Stripe wallet, a Patreon account... Otherwise, we would lose all of our money. The pandemic was still around. We couldn't fly to the US. My US visa had already expired.

We needed to get an American SSN... You didn't have any employees in the US. So we were looking for our supporters in the US who would help us create this infrastructure. Anna Veduta lives in America, why didn't you reach out to her? She wasn't working for us in 2021. She was working for Khodorkovsky.

Was she? Yes, she was working for Khodorkovsky in 2021. We hired her in the spring of 2022. You didn't have anyone in the US... We even posted an announcement in some chats... There was a guy who agreed first but then he got scared for his relatives in Russia. This was a big risk for the person. I'm still thankful to this man.

Eventually, Alexander Zheleznyak agreed to do it for us for free. He said he would create all the infrastructure and support it for some time. Which he did. He never asked anything for doing it. He was a very valuable volunteer for us. What about Leontiev? Wait a second. I agree with you... Knowing where we ended up in 2024... We weren't cautious enough...

This man did everything for free... He built the whole infrastructure and would send the donations from Stripe to Lithuania, where we work. This was a blessing. To be honest, we should have stopped this much earlier. It was quite clear that sooner or later we would get attacked because of him. Until some point, Russian opposition organizations never attacked each other.

Until Mikhail Khodorkovsky signed a paper of non-aggression... This paper said that opposition organizations would not criticize each other. Until this point, opposition organizations never criticized each other. We were all fighting Putin with our weapons. We would sometimes disagree with each other... We all believed that our methods were more effective... Overall we were all fighting Putin.

Since early 2023, we faced a series of attacks on our organization. Political organizations began fighting us instead of fighting Putin. We didn't notice this until some point... We should have done a reality check. We should have thought about our insecurities. We didn't do it because we were too busy doing our thing. This is a big mistake that we - and I personally - made.

Do you blame Khodorkovsky for what happened? Didn't you hire a person with a bad reputation? He volunteered to work for us for free. He did a big thing for us and he never asked for anything in exchange. I don't want to say anything bad about him. I'm very thankful to him for what he did for us.

You've just said that you should have got rid of him in 2021. We should have... Why would you get rid of a good person? As soon as we had an opportunity to replace him with our employees, we should have done it immediately. We should have foreseen that our opponents would use it against us.

What would they use against you if he was a good person? They would lie about him... They would photoshop some documents and make a documentary about a banker who stole the money from everyone. This is not true! Well, these claims are not true. He is a good person but he caused you trouble, right?

He is a good person who worked well... But you should have fired him earlier? We should have realized that he would cause a lot of trouble. Unfortunately, this happens. When and where did you meet Sergei Leontiev? I met Sergei Leontiev once in my life after my public talk in New York. He came to me and introduced himself.

We proceeded to have dinner together with other people. I have no relations with him. How is he related to ACF? He used to be our donor for a long period of time. How much would he donate? As I said before, he would donate 20 thousand dollars a month. He started donating in the fall of 2020 when Alexei got poisoned.

He never asked anything back. Never had any impact on us. Never tried to get anything back. 20 thousand dollars a month was about 3% of our monthly budget. Did you know about Zheleznyak and Leontiev's reputation in Russia? We read about them... I'm very sorry about it and I said it in our response to Maxim Katz.

We didn't see that Leontiev claimed to be Navalny's banker in the European press. There was a series of interviews where Leontiev claimed to be Navalny's banker. He obviously hired some PR agents who lied about it. I can't believe that you didn't know about it. These interviews were coming out in the span of three years... From 2021 to 2023...

There are over 100 employees in ACF... Your organization is very active in the media... How could nobody notice these articles coming out in Austria and Lichtenstein? Do you think that we read Lichtenstein press? ACF is a very Russia-oriented organization. ACF employees pay attention to any word said about them.

They would always tweet about someone making a mistake... I can't believe that none of you never faced these articles from 'Navalny's banker' in three years... None of you sent this article to your chat and asked who the hell is this? Has this never happened? We could have missed it... Try to look at it from our perspective.

There is a whole bunch of Navalny's fellows... There's a lot of people who pretend to be his associates. You talked about it in the past. When I arrived in Lithuania, someone told me: we're so glad you're here. Do you want to meet this person? And I say: who is this? They tell me: what do you mean! He's Navalny's lawyer!

This person moved to Lithuania in 2012 and lied that he was Navalny's lawyer. He had already got his Lithuanian passport when I first came to Lithuania. I asked Alexei if he knew this person. He said he didn't know him. Some people claim to be Navalny's associates and lawyers... This is a common phenomenon that is hard to fight.

I tried to fight it... When people arrive in the Netherlands or Sweden and seek asylum... They bring up being Navalny's closest allies... We asked European officials to contact us about such people. Had this Lichtenstein newspaper contacted us for details, we would have told them that Leontiev is not Navalny's banker. They never contacted us.

He's not just some random person. He's a banker with a very questionable reputation. In your response to Katz, you showed that you were texting Leontiev. You didn't text him for too long, however, you have a history of chatting with him. And when he calls himself Navalny's lawyer... Banker. Yes, the Lithuanian lawyer impressed me a lot...

He calls himself Navalny's banker which casts a shade on Alexei... Why didn't you text him: Sergei, what the hell? It is obvious that these articles were written by him. Let me say this again. As soon as we realized how many articles he wrote... We got very mad and we talked about it in detail in our response to the investigation.

We said that this was not true and completely unethical. Didn't you do this earlier because you were too busy fighting Khodorkovsky on Twitter? We're not fighting Khodorkovsky on Twitter. Or were you fighting Katz? Shouldn't you have asked Leontiev to stop lying about your imprisoned leader? Isn't this more effective?

Let me say this again. I would have reached out to him had I seen this article earlier. I never saw it. And nobody sent you this article. No. We could have missed it. This is how it looks now: there are people with very questionable reputations... Who were involved in the Probusinessbank fraud are now affiliated with ACF.

Leontiev was just a donor... He lied about being Navalny's banker but we'll leave him aside. Let's talk about Zheleznyak. He was appointed the head of the American ACF branch. He was appointed as the head and the treasurer, as far as I know. He was just a treasurer. A treasurer, okay. It doesn't matter if this was a real position or not.

Didn't you check on him before appointing him? Let me remind you that ACF is an investigative organization which is known for its investigations. You didn't check on his past because you didn't want to? Or for some other reason? I don't want to repeat what I said in October when I replied to Maxim Katz... I answered all of these questions in my video...

Can you answer this question? The biggest investigative organization in Russian politics hires a very controversial person. And pays zero attention to his past. We never hired him... He was a volunteer who agreed to help us with our documents. We needed to appoint someone who would open the bank account for us... We decided to appoint him because he was doing all this work.

I admit that we should have thought about how it would look... We allowed our opponents to accuse us of all the sins... We set ourselves up... Why do you care how it looks? How does it look for you personally? Is this okay for you to work with him? Even though you weren't paying him... Is it okay for you to work with a person with such a background?

It was okay for me. Everything that he did in Probusinessbank is okay for you. Based on the investigation by Project, Putin and Nabiullina after 2012 decided to gain more control over Russian banks. They decided to get rid of most of the banks to prepare for the wartime economy. They were getting rid of the banks and some smart people turned this into a corruption scheme.

Probusinessbank suffered from this scheme... They had one of the best liabilities ratios among all the banks that were announced bankrupt. This was a middle-sized bank that got destroyed similarly to many other banks... Some of them were destroyed for a reason and others not. Bank24ru was closed for no reason.

DIA would appoint a bankruptcy trustee who would steal all the assets from the bank... And then the missing money would be called stolen. Have you read the investigation by The Bell? Have you read the investigation by Insider? I have read the investigations and liked them... So what did they find out?

They both found out that they couldn't come to a conclusion about the fraud without an audit. They proved that Zheleznyak took the money from the bank account to other companies... Later they would return the money but this scheme was illegal! This is illegal in almost every country. Banks are not allowed to do it and you showed it in your response.

You said that this money was later returned. First of all, you didn't prove that all the money was returned. The Bell found a smaller amount returned. And other analysts found even a smaller amount that was proven to be returned. This is a problem of these analysts... Look... Don't you trust The Bell?

I trust them and they didn't come to a conclusion that you just said. This is not true. I don't want to defend Zheleznyak and Leontiev. This is what you're doing now. They should defend their own reputation... They said that they would go to court and I hope they do. To me, it looks like in 2012-2015 around 300 banks were announced bankrupt.

And Probusinessbank was similar to all of these banks. This story was used to attack ACF because we worked with Zheleznyak. To me, it looks like a... This might sound too daring... To me, it sounds like the Kirovles case. A lot of people are selling woods but we would investigate this company because Navalny worked with this company.

Are you serious? This is just an example. This is how I see it. There is a big number of bankers who fled Russia. Sergey Pugachev gets interviewed by everyone on YouTube... These bankers pretend to be political experts and enjoy their life abroad. I'm not trying to prove that Zheleznyak and Leontiev are innocent.

I feel like Zheleznyak gets attacked for helping us. Every person is a sum of his deeds, good and bad. You can't do 5 good things and 3 bad things and be +2. We all do some good stuff and some bad stuff. We should look at it overall... Since 2020, I only saw Zheleznyak doing good stuff. I'm thankful to him.

Who's to blame for people losing their bank deposits? These were not deposits... These were money from the creditors... This is an example of manipulation. When we say 'depositors' we think of a babushka that deposits money for her funeral... What if a person is an individual entrepreneur and deposits money into the bank? He's a creditor. A legal entity that deposits money into the bank.

These details all matter. Okay, regular businessmen lost their money... All the depositors got their money back. The creditors only got 47 or 48% back. Who's to blame for it? I feel like DIA is to blame. This is what Roman Dobrokhotov, the Insider editor-in-chief, wrote: By the way, he is your supporter.

He's the editor-in-chief of the Insider. We can't call him your opponent... This is how he sums the investigations up: 'Imagine that someone borrowed money from you and then lost it in the casino.' 'He doesn't have your money so he didn't steal it... However, you no longer have your money.' 'We haven't found any proof that Zheleznyak or Leontiev stole the money from the bank.

This is very hard to find out.' 'They are definitely responsible for the few hundred million that disappeared from the bank.' How do you feel about this conclusion? Roman Dobrokhotov has a right to have this opinion. He spent quite a lot of time analyzing the investigation. He came to this conclusion that I would disagree with.

I feel like I would emphasize other aspects of this case. Sergei Leontiev gambled his creditors' money. He won and he got the profit from the gamble. This is wrong and unethical. However, when the creditors and DIA tried to take the profit away from Leontiev... Zheleznyak wasn't involved in it, by the way... They failed to take his profit away from him because Leontiev is good at proving his innocence.

I have a lot of problems with his ethics. I can't call this theft. Leontiev proves his point in European courts. However, I don't care about it. I don't care whether he's proven innocent or not. These cases are happening at Western courts. We trust these courts. These cases were never considered in court.

It's not true. Maxim Katz claimed this and he lied about it. Wait a second... These cases were considered on the merits. Is it right that until they are proven guilty you would consider them innocent? This is how the presumption of innocence works. It is only related to Sergei Leontiev. If the court cases result in creditors getting their money back - I wouldn't be neither happy nor upset.

I wouldn't care. If the creditors don't get their money back, I would be a little happy because it would match my opinion on this case. This would mean that I was right about this case. In general, I don't really care. Why don't you need the court decision to call Nevzlin guilty for the assault? Because I'm a human who spent months studying the evidence.

I am convinced beyond reasonable doubt. You still need a court decision to understand what Probusinessbank did to the creditors' money? I'm curious how these cases would end. There is space for reasonable doubt... I don't have enough expertise to come to a conclusion. I am ready to be wrong... I am ready to admit that I was wrong about this case.

How do I see it? They gambled their creditors' money and took the profit. This is unethical but it's not a theft. If I am proven wrong, I would admit that I was wrong and I should do better. Why don't you need the court decisions to call the subjects of your investigations corrupt thugs? Because we know how corruption works.

We are experts in investigating corruption. If Sergey Lavrov's family uses Oleg Deripaska's private jet, this is clearly corruption. If Alisher Usmanov builds a mansion for Dmitry Medvedev and gives it to him, this is a textbook example of corruption. We are not scared to call it by its name. Oleg Tinkov, a famous banker, said the following: 'Why would they make an hour-long video? It is clear from the first five minutes.'

'The money from the bank accounts were transferred to offshore accounts owned by the bankers.' 'This is it. No more evidence needed.' Oleg Tinkov has a right to have his opinion. We were curious to find out what happened to this money next. We found out and showed it... I feel like we did it in a convincing way.

Did you show that the money was returned back? We did. The money was not returned. This is what everyone found out. The reporters only found a fraction of the money that was returned. There is no evidence of the whole amount being returned. I feel silly. I'm repeating our video but now I don't have any numbers in front of me.

This is a trap that we got into. I told you that we should have avoided this case happening to us. I told you that we tracked all the money and showed all the transactions... Maxim Katz didn't mention that the money was returned to the bank. And you are telling me that The Bell disagrees with us.

I'm not going to defend these bankers. I can't call them frauds. I'm not sure about it. This would mean that we made the wrong decision in the past... This is why this situation is so sensitive for us. What did you do wrong in the past? We can't say that Zheleznyak never worked for us.

You can say that working with him was a mistake. You can admit this was a mistake. You don't have to defend him at all costs. I'm not trying to defend him. This is how it looks like. I told you what happened. This is why people have a problem with you. There are two ways to deal with it. You picked the wrong one and let people down.

Why do you think that we let anyone down? Why do I think so? Yes. This is quite important. We all live in our media bubbles. This is a global issue. Trump would watch his favorite TV channels and then decide to make Canada American. These channels told him that he was a great leader. I talked about it recently and it is very important for me.

The whole humanity has failed at social media. We can no longer tell the truth from the lies. You said that we let down many people. The numbers tell me the opposite. After we replied to Katz and proved that he lied in his investigation... He photoshopped some documents and didn't show the incoming journal entries... We proved that he lied.

We didn't want to defend the bankers. We wanted to prove that Katz lied. And then we gained more new followers than we lost after his video. You said that we let everyone down. I didn't say this. You're manipulating, aren't you? I didn't say that you let everyone down.

In some echo chamber of the social media, it looks like everyone dislikes ACF now. My statistics show the opposite. The numbers show that we managed to gain more supporters after making our video response. Even though sometimes the social media looks scary. I would like to talk about it later.

What is the like/dislike ratio at your response video? I haven't checked it... There are 32k likes... Dislikes are not displayed, unfortunately... Some people used special software and found out there were 42k dislikes. There are more dislikes on this video than likes... Okay... Why did ACF sort the comments to show the most recent?

Usually, you would show the most liked comments first. I don't know an answer to this question. It looks like ACF tried to hide the most liked comments. The most liked comments completely destroyed ACF. So ACF hid these comments on purpose. Okay, I can talk about my actions. Finance and legal management are my responsibilities in the organization.

I'm not making videos. I believe what you said... I can assume that we did it to avoid manipulation. It is too easy to leave one of the first comments and to get the most likes. This is what Kremlin bots do and other bots, too. Unfortunately, YouTube is quite easy to manipulate. It is quite easy to create an impression...

This is why my analysis is based on objective numbers. What do you think about the cash that the bankers took from the prosecutors? I feel like Avilon was one of their biggest customers... Avilon was also protected by the prosecutors. Avilon was the second biggest automobile dealer in Russia. They were protected by the Prosecutor's Office.

And Avilon was a VIP client in ProBusinessBank. As far as I know, the prosecutors would also deposit their money into the bank. They lost their money eventually and started prosecuting the bank. Were you fine with these facts? This only became clear during the 2024 investigations. I didn't know about Avilon before that.

Did you know about the prosecutors depositing money into the bank? I didn't know about it. We made a movie about Chaika in 2015 where we destroyed the Prosecutor's Office. We explained that this organization had turned into a gang. But how can you still call Zheleznyak a nice person? I am thankful to him for what he did for us.

I'm not saying that he is a saint or something... This is what you said about him on your video: He's a cool guy and a very nice person. Go fuck yourself, Alexei Venediktov. This is what you said two years ago. You said this about a man who stored prosecutor's cash in his bank. I said this on my livestream.

Sometimes I get too emotional during livestreams. People are making more mistakes when they are live. There is a whole industry that watches our livestreams and cuts them into the most interesting parts. This whole attack on ACF... Leonid, wait... Wait... Ilya Remeslo, a Kremlin propagandist started this attack... And then Alexei Venediktov proceeded to attack us...

I really dislike him as a person. And then Maxim Katz investigated this topic again. Mikhail Khodork

Jumped into the boat without reading what's written on the boat. And this boat had a Hamas flag on it, let's say. I am mad at myself for doing it. I was too busy to double-check and to prevent this from happening. This is important. There is a difference between justifying and explaining. When we make mistakes, we shouldn't be justifying them. We should always explain why we made these mistakes.

Before the summer of 2024, we lived in a much simpler world. We only had one enemy - Putin. We would only fight him and his team. We could never have imagined other opposition organizations fighting us. Had we known this earlier, we would have made other decisions in 2021. Nobody has a time machine, though.

Why didn't you pick another strategy? Instead of making a video about it... Why didn't you say the following: 'We have worked with these people and recently we found out some details that for some reasons we have missed previously.' 'We have studied the papers which look very suspicious. According to our principles, we can't continue to work with such people.' 'We admit that we fucked up and we would no longer work with them. We will try our best not to let you down in the future.'

Don't you think that such a response would be met differently? You chose to insult everyone that criticized ACF. I feel like our reaction was quite similar to what you just said. We stopped working with these people. We admitted making mistakes. We didn't know about these articles coming out in Austria and the transactions with the creditors' money. We condemned these actions. However, we couldn't ignore the fact that most of the accusations that we faced were false. These were false and edited. Why wouldn't we say this?

We did make mistakes and at the same time we got falsely accused. We said both things, and according to people who donated to us, they were happy with our reaction. We're shooting an interview a day after finding out about Tigran Keosayan's critical condition. How did you react to the news?

I didn't post anything about it on my socials. I don't give a shit about Tigran Keosayan. I'm not going to tweet anything about his disease. He's a filthy propagandist that I would like to see in court. I would wish him to recover to face justice in the future. I don't feel like I should comment on such news.

I have all the reasons to hate Margarita Simonyan. She is doing a lot of mean things. We will never forget what she said about Navalny's poisoning in 2020. We will never forget what she said on February 16, 2024. Her boss ordered to murder Alexei Navalny, and lots of Russians lost their hope that day. People get sick and they die... I'm not going to be happy about Keosayan's disease.

I talked about it with Maria Pevchikh, and I want to ask you about it. This is related to your manners on social media. Can I only talk about myself? You can. We are all very different. We disagree on many matters, and it is okay. This is how Alexei intended ACF to be. We argue a lot, and we respect each other's opinion.

I felt like you all behave the same way. Ivan Zhdanov insults SOTA, tells people to fuck themselves. He calls Venediktov shaggy. He also replies with a meme, 'none of your fucking business.' And you act in a similar way. You called a supporter of Maxim Katz a unicorn scum. You replied to Venediktov, 'you're a drunkard, the pharmacy is around the corner.'

These quotes are out of context. Venediktov got drunk and wrote a bunch of drunken tweets where he insulted me and Maria. I replied to him in the same way. He was obviously wasted and decided to go to Twitter. Sometimes I react to it as a human being. I want to reply to him.

And you also wrote: Aliyev talked to Erdogan and told Putin to blow him again. This is a meme created by Roizman. I got criticized for this tweet. You can make such jokes in your private chats. Are you sure that this is appropriate for a top manager of a political organization who gets to meet Western politicians?

X, previously known as Twitter, is a very peculiar environment. A lot of people don't like it. I don't really like it, too. There are certain rules of communication on this platform. It has its own memes. Some people like it, and others don't. Evgeny Roizman is known for insulting people on his Twitter. People like his profile. I allow myself to be sincere on Twitter.

Twitter is not a real world. Twitter is extremely niche. Twitter doesn't represent Russian society. Twitter doesn't represent Russian opposition. Twitter is a platform for 30-50 thousand Russian emigrants, activists, and reporters. It is a toxic platform for frustrated people. These people have suffered a lot since February 2024. People share their frustration on this platform.

And manipulators like Maxim Katz or Alexei Venediktov use Twitter to attack their opponents. I don't respect the unicorns who attack us by a command. I insult them, and sometimes I regret it. Sometimes I don't regret it. Some of my replies become memes. I'm still proud of my 'You surely deserve Putin' reply.

Do you realize that... I'm sorry. Wait a second. Western politicians don't follow me on Twitter. Twitter is as far from reality as it gets. However, I'm using Twitter every day. I'm reading hundreds of replies wishing me to die. 'They should have killed you with the hammer!' These unicorns are sorry I survived the assault. I feel like this is very wrong.

What is wrong? I'm no longer sensible. I've been in politics for sixteen years already. I've got to retire soon. In these sixteen years, I've faced so much hate that I no longer pay attention to it. In general, this environment has become so toxic and unappreciative. I feel like this is extremely unfair.

People enjoy talking about politicians making mistakes. Politicians' work is now seen by everybody. This is how social media work. They praise the hate, and it is unfair. Maria Pevchikh gave up on her amazing career to fight corruption. She doesn't deserve even a millionth of the hate that she gets. She's a sincere and cool person. She does what she thinks is good.

Yulia Navalnaya lost her husband. He had been tortured for 3.5 years. She doesn't deserve to get a billionth of the hate she's getting. These haters would never have said this to her face. Social media make all of us brave. I don't want to talk about myself.

I could have said the same thing. We should remember the big picture. ACF is a small team of enthusiasts. We all could have made a lot of money from our careers. We all went through arrests and criminal cases. We were forced to leave Russia. We sacrificed a lot trying to do something. People like hating on others' mistakes, and I find it disgusting. I find this very unfair.

People shouldn't be embarrassed to support politicians. This is not only related to ACF. Other opposition members sacrifice a lot to fight for their values. These people are willing to sacrifice their lives for this fight even though they might not win. This deserves some respect. We don't see a lot of praise on social media. We mostly see the hate.

Elon Musk has made Twitter much more hateful. I find this extremely unfair. I don't feel like I can change anything. Sometimes I would be walking around the airport. People would approach me and thank me for my work and ask for a picture. I would take a picture with them, and they would say: 'I wasn't sure whether I should approach you. I didn't want to interfere.'

And I would tell them not to be too shy. We live in a very toxic environment. We've got Putin who's still fighting us. And we also have many other opponents now. We're working 24/7. And I would like to say this on behalf of many politicians. We appreciate your kind words. We appreciate your positive feedback.

Maria Pevchikh, Ivan Zhdanov, whatever, Dmitry Gudkov, Ilya Yashin, Vladimir Kara-Murza... They all deserve the support. If you meet them in the airport, don't hesitate to take a picture with them and to thank them for their work. This is my message that sounds like a sermon.

What does it have to do with saying that Putin will have to blow Aliyev? Sometimes I'm also being rude on Twitter, and I regret it. You said that nobody cares about Twitter. Twitter is not North Korea, which nobody knows anything about. Things that you write on Twitter get shared on Telegram. A lot of people would see what you write there.

Sometimes I'm being too rude. This makes me upset. I'm trying hard to become a better version of myself. I'm making New Year Resolutions, and then on January 3, I'm eating sweets and insulting someone on Twitter again. I think that every politician has a right to be human.

Do you realize that such behavior would make you lose some supporters? We might also gain new supporters. Twitter is a very tiny environment for outsiders. My wife is a sociologist, and I can assure you that Twitter has no effect on politics in Russia.

In the beginning of the war, you said that launching a new YouTube channel cost ACF 2 million dollars. This isn't particularly right. When we relocated our employees to Lithuania and realized that we needed to start a new channel. While we were working in Russia, we couldn't afford having a decent video production. They would confiscate all of our stuff every couple of months.

All of our cameras and computers are still stored in the Investigative Committee, as well as soft boxes and lights. They confiscated 65 million roubles worth of equipment. They just stole it all. I'm really sorry. When they forced us to leave Russia, we could have broken down and cried. We wanted to cry. But we didn't. We decided to make lemonade.

We realized that we could finally afford having a video production in Vilnius. We rented a big office and renovated it. We bought a whole bunch of equipment. We hired cameramen and launched the production. We were planning to launch the channel on March 1. It had nothing to do with the war.

We moved to Lithuania in the fall of 2021, and we were planning to launch the channel in March. We had to launch the channel as soon as the war started on February 24. This was very important for us. TV Rain got closed. We spent about six months making videos about the war.

When someone asked me how much we spent on our channel, I added renovation costs and salaries. Everything that we spent. These were our total costs in six months. People would criticize us for spending 2 million on the channel. This is not actually fair.

Luba Sobol worked for Navalny Live channel. In 2022, you didn't have money to run the channel. Luba Sobol asked you to give her some money, but you refused. Why? First of all, I don't own the ACF money. I'm a financial manager, which makes me a good target for our opponents. I don't own the money.

Luba asked us to support her channel. On February 24, we all lost monetization from YouTube. She used to fund her channel from monetization, so as we did. We could not even pay salaries on time. We told her that we didn't have enough money for her channel. We offered her to cut the costs.

She and her team worked from Tallinn. We offered her to cut some of the costs. She refused and said that she would find the money somewhere else. And so she went to look for money. She eventually borrowed money from Leonid Nevzlin. She did. We found out last summer. She said that one of the people who she borrowed from was Nevzlin.

You had 2 million dollars to renovate. We didn't have it by that time. We had already launched Popular Politics. When did she approach you? She approached us in March. Two million were already gone in March. Yes, the channel was already launched. From November 2021 to February 2022, we spent two million overall.

We spent them on relocating employees, renovating the office, and launching the production. So overall we spent about two million. We had already spent everything by March. She borrowed from Nevzlin and immediately gave it back to him when ACF accused him of assaulting you. Luba Sobol started raising money to pay her loan back to Nevzlin.

How did you feel when you found out about it? I respected her for making this move. This was a very honest move that was hard to make. She was in a very vulnerable position. She promised him to pay the loan back. So I respect her for what she did. Didn't you feel awkward or embarrassed? You couldn't help her.

I didn't. There was no way that I could help her in 2022. I didn't have the money. I became the financial director of ACF in the fall of 2016. We were getting ready to start Navalny's presidential campaign. It was clear that we would need a lot of money for the campaign. I would have to meet wealthy people and ask them to support us.

You never know how much money you're going to raise from crowdfunding. I had to create a credit card for donations. I told Alexei that I was the head of the headquarters and I could do all this work. He said that I would go to prison for it and I would get a lot of hate. Money is always a very sensitive topic.

People always get offended when it comes to money. The Russian government pays a lot of attention to how the opposition is funded. I knew this, but we needed to start the campaign. I said that I would do it, and I don't regret it. Alexei offered me this job, and I agreed.

I was quite a wealthy person, and I had no interest in stealing any money. I made quite a lot of money from my IT career. I declared my income in 2011 when I ran in the Yekaterinburg parliament elections. I declared having two million dollars in income from the sale of my shares. It was clear that I was a wealthy person, and I would be the right choice for this position.

Eventually, it was still a big problem. You wouldn't understand it, and many people wouldn't understand it. I was responsible for paying salaries to my employees every month. I didn't have enough money. We were getting attacked by the government all the time. They threatened crypto donors that they would find these people.

In the last 5.5 years, I've been extremely stressed out. I borrowed money from my friends to pay the salaries. Luckily, I have a good reputation, and people would lend me money. I know that Luba was in a terrible position. I've been in this position for 5.5 years. I don't want to complain. This is my choice.

Managing the finance of an organization is quite difficult and stressful. They opened a criminal case against me. What can I do? I need to work hard. We promised Alexei not to give up. Luba Sobol was one of the most popular members of ACF. It doesn't matter if she was working for ACF or not.

You didn't have enough money to support her, so Leonid Nevzlin was funding the channel called Navalny Live. Didn't you feel like you failed as a manager to find a better solution? We were quite desperate. I could not find a better solution. I couldn't find the money for this channel.

In December of 2024, you posted a picture of Vladimir Petukhov, a former Mayor of Nefteyugansk. You wrote: Vladimir Petukhov could have turned 75 today. Why did you do this? Let me call this trolling. Did you mean that Khodorkovsky ordered the assassination of Petukhov?

I respect the European Court of Human Rights. I've won many cases at this court. The court hasn't come to a conclusion. The court considers that the investigation wasn't held correctly and should be investigated once again transparently. I really hope that this case will be investigated in the Beautiful Russia of the Future.

This assassination happened on June 26, 1998. Do you assume that Khodorkovsky killed him? I fear that Nevzlin ordered the assassination. I've become suspicious after what happened to me recently. Can you name your three biggest problems with Khodorkovsky? It's an interesting question.

I don't want to talk about Khodorkovsky. I want to talk about Putin. This started last spring. Opposition politicians started fighting each other, and this drives me mad. This gets in the way of fighting Putin. I got hit with a hammer in front of my family. This is quite personal now.

You like bringing up Khodorkovsky, not me. I bring him up more than I do. Let me answer your question. My problem with Khodorkovsky is that he thinks that he can buy anything. He's buying everyone. This is his strategy, and I don't like it. I've never paid anyone for their opinion. Mikhail Khodorkovsky does this all the time.

What should Khodorkovsky do to end this war against ACF? He should stop fighting us. He should just stop. He should call his media and tell them to stop looking for our mistakes every day. This is hilarious. Every newspaper in Moscow follows the three Sobyanins rule. They should mention Sobyanin at least three times in their newspapers.

Alexei Kovalev noticed this pattern and wrote about it. If they mention Sobyanin in an article, they would mention him at least three times. It makes people remember him faster. This is hilarious. NLP is bullshit. This is pseudoscience. If you read any of Khodorkovsky's media, they would mention ACF every day.

It doesn't matter if we actually do anything wrong. They would make it up. I would like them to stop. It can be done with one phone call. Leonid Nevzlin called Mozhem Obyasnit to order an article about Alexei Navalny not writing his posts from prison. I would like them to stop doing this. Thanks.

Do you think that Khodorkovsky was aware of Nevzlin's order to assault you? I don't think so. You don't? I don't think so. I didn't feel this way. I only think that he is politically responsible for it. I don't think that he was aware of the assault. He's not this kind of person.

You think that Khodorkovsky didn't know about the upcoming assault. This analogy might sound a little off. As any other analogy, it wouldn't work 100% of the time. In 2014, Putin told Kadyrov multiple times that he was mad at Nemtsov. Kadyrov decided to make Putin happy and killed Nemtsov. I have no evidence.

I don't think that Putin ordered to kill Nemtsov. I think that this was Kadyrov's idea. Since September 12, 2024, I've received so many messages about Khodorkovsky being obsessed with ACF. People complain that Khodorkovsky can't stop talking about ACF. I know that in private conversations, Khodorkovsky talks about his hate or jealousy towards ACF a lot.

Nevzlin is his closest friend. Nevzlin listened to him and decided to make his friend happy. I don't think that Khodorkovsky ordered the assault. I think that it was Nevzlin who did it. However, I think that Khodorkovsky, as a politician, is responsible for the assault. This is what we said in the investigation.

I would like to briefly talk about the 6000 list. Oleg Kashin is on this list. Why? We have a similar criteria for all the propagandists who supported Russian troops and wished them victory. He said that Ukraine should not exist as a state. Everyone who shares such views to a big audience is dangerous. Oleg Kashin was included in the list together with other propagandists.

As far as I understand, you are talking about his views on the war from 2014 to 2022. And also about his articles in 2022. In the last... Three years ago... In the last years, he has spoken out against the war. We have to admit that some of his views from 2014 match Putin's narrative. However, he's spoken out against the war for three years already.

He dedicated all of his work to it. He's being prosecuted in Russia. What should he do to be excluded from the list? I am no longer involved in working on the list. The criteria is the same for everyone. We call it active repentance. He should admit that he was wrong and say that he is sorry.

Oleg Kashin, if I'm not wrong... I haven't been following him closely. I'm not interested in what he writes. On February 24, he wrote: we should not forget whose side we are on. And then he would speak out against the war for three years straight. He's got an opposite opinion now.

Okay... Isn't this enough to exclude him from the list? You should ask our lawyers. When they created the 6000 list, which consists of 8000 names now, they stuck to the EU criteria. We don't put everyone on the list. Our lawyers know the EU rules very well. So if they consider that a person should be put on the sanctions list, they do it.

I guess our lawyers think this way. Let's look at the big picture once again. When we created this list, it was the right moment to implement it. We could have used it as a tool of pressure. Unfortunately, it is too late now. So the 6000 list makes no sense now. This is true. It makes no sense.

They are no longer interested in sanctions. The West agrees that the sanctions do not work. We've been telling them that they would fail for a long time. They haven't implemented individual sanctions for a long time. Now we don't only have Orban. We also have Fico in Slovakia and a pro-Putin government in Austria.

Unfortunately, all these sanctions lists no longer make any sense. This is quite sad because we have spent a lot of time working on these lists. We believed that this list had a big potential. So it no longer makes sense now. Not really.

I would only ask you about your approach to this list. I watched Varlamov's interview with Kashin. We know that Navalny was poisoned and is now in prison. He went on a hunger strike. However, Navalny's associates, this fat pig Leonid Volkov or Maria Pevchikh, were not poisoned. They didn't go to prison, they didn't go on a hunger strike. They are wasting their uncle's legacy.

I hope that they lose everything one day and Leonid Volkov will eat shit and drink vodka. This is a very typical statement from Kashin. This is why I don't like reading his articles. I don't want to even talk about such statements. It feels like you put him on the list because you got offended.

It's not true. He gave this interview after we put him on the list. He has disliked you for a very long time. It's true. He's hated me since 2013. I don't know how I offended him. I'm not interested in Oleg Kashin. Not because he's being rude. He just doesn't know shit. He's lying.

Oleg Kashin made up fake news that Yulia Navalnaya's father served in the intelligence. He made up fake news that I'm wasting Navalny's legacy. This is not true, and I don't want to talk about it. It's not interesting to me. He might say that this chair is brown. Why would I argue with him? I see that the chair is black.

To survive in this mad world after February 24, 2022, and February 16, 2024, I have to stay away from such people. I have to stay sane. I have to remember that 2+2 is four and white shouldn't be called black. I should ignore all these people who say the opposite. These people deny the truth. They want to make us crazy.

We have to stay mentally healthy. We will need our mental health in the Beautiful Russia of the Future. You said that he was being rude. Aren't you also rude on Twitter? I said that I don't care about him not because he's rude but because he's lying. I thought that being rude was also one of the reasons. I misheard it.

He's making up facts and creating a fake world. I only care about the real world. I don't know how this is called in philosophy. I believe in the objectivity. I believe that an objective reality exists. I believe in objective truth. This contradicts the main idea of Putin's propaganda. Their propaganda is based on two claims: we will never know the truth, and it's clear that everything's unclear.

I disagree with these claims. And I disagree with Oleg Kashin. I don't actually care that much about him. He's a person who got included in your list for what he said before the war. In the first days of the war, he changed his mind, but he's still on the list. After the Fridman-gate, you said that everyone makes mistakes.

What matters is how you react to your mistakes. You didn't leave ACF after your mistake. You allowed yourself to make a mistake, and you didn't allow another person to make a mistake. Even though he's not the nicest guy, I find this inconsistent from your side. I allow everyone to make a mistake.

I'm not following Oleg Kashin, so it's hard for me to comment on him. There is a mechanism of getting off the list. Kashin could have used this mechanism. Some people actually did use it and got excluded from the list. How is Vladimir Milov related to ACF? Vladimir Milov is our ally. We don't agree with him on every aspect.

He's quite close to us in our views. He gets to come to our YouTube channel often. He doesn't work for us. He's never worked for us. Coming back to your claim about staying away from certain people. In March of 2022, Milov came to Navalny Live and said the following: 'I'm going to come back to Russia soon together with my colleagues.' 'And we're going to have a very tough conversation with all of you.'

'We remember everything. Nobody is going to avoid the responsibility.' 'You're going to clean the toilets with this white-blue-red doormat.' 'You will be held responsible for every victim.' What can you say about these words? I disagree with him. In March of 2022, a lot of people were quite desperate and hysterical.

People believed that the war would end soon. I said that the war would not end soon. This doesn't mean that I'm super smart. This is just a lucky guess. I made a lot of wrong predictions, too. I don't understand why should I comment on what he said. I feel like I can only talk for myself.

We allow our guests to say whatever they want on our YouTube shows. We have different kinds of guests who say different stuff. Of course, I disagree with this statement. He was definitely wrong when he said this. I can explain why he said this. In March, the Russian offensive stopped, and then Russian troops even stepped back from Kyiv and Chernigov.

Some politicians became too positive about this trend. This is another reason not to be a political pundit. I'm asking you why you have such allies as Milov? It looks like he's a very poor expert in economics. It looks like he hates people. He's often hysterical. Sometimes I want to ask you: Are you fine to have such an ally? Are you sure anyone in Russia would support you having such allies?

We have a lot of different allies. We have always had very different people in our organization. When I was the head of Alexei's headquarters in 2013, we had leftist LGBT activists and nationalists who would fight each other in other circumstances. Alexei would also gather different people together. This is a fundamental rule of modern politics in the era of social media.

There is only one person that you would totally agree with on your views. This is you. There is no other person with such views. I'm not sure I agree with myself. This happens, too. There can be a person that you 95% agree with. This would be boring to talk to the person with almost the same views. If everyone agrees, this is a boring show.

Are we talking about making a show? This is why we usually talk about something we disagree on. This is how the social media environment works. I disagree with Vladimir Milov on this quote. I agree with him on ten other aspects. In the Beautiful Russia of the Future, some voters would not vote for him because of this quote.

He might lose the elections because of this. This is fine. This is okay to have different opinions on things. This is not about his opinion. This is about the lack of respect. Correct me if I'm wrong. I feel like ACF still wants to stay in touch with people in Russia. This is our primary goal.

Don't you feel like Vladimir Milov makes you further from Russians? He said this on our YouTube channel, but he also said... I'm not only talking about this specific quote. We also had Dmitry Gordon and Mikhail Podolyak who said much worse things about Russia. They were invited speakers while Milov is your ally.

He doesn't work in ACF. He has a right to have an opinion. I disagree with him, and I don't make such statements. I don't want to defend him. The voters would make their choice. This statement is a problem for him. It's going to stay with him forever.

So when we face fair elections, he will have to apologize for what he said. That's okay. Last year, Russian flags were not allowed on an anti-war protest in Berlin. One activist tried to bring the flag to the protest. They took the flag away from him. How do you feel about this situation?

There were a few people with Russian flags. Vesna movements had Russian flags at the protests, and nobody took their flags away. At the same march? Yes. This sixteen-year-old guy is called Luka Andreev. He lives in Estonia. He was definitely trying to provoke people. He wanted to stand in the front row.

Before the protest, there was a lot of discussion about Russian flags. Some people said that the flags should be banned. We should take into account the context of political culture in Berlin. There's a bunch of Putin's supporters in Germany who gather with Russian flags. They march with Russian flags in Treptower Park.

The Russian flag is now a symbol of Z-propaganda. I would always say that we shouldn't ban Russian flags at the protests. Everyone expresses themselves in a way they can. This protest aims at gathering as many anti-war Russians as we can. It doesn't matter what the protesters bring. We should trust them.

I managed to convince everyone after a lot of discussion. So no flags were banned at the protest. Neither Russian nor Ukrainian. There is a difference between taking part in the protest and trying to enter the front row. I wasn't in Berlin that day. I was in the US.

I don't think that they should have taken the flag away from him. They should have asked him to leave the front row. They didn't mean to have the flag in the front row. However, they made another decision together with the German police. I wasn't there, and I can't say if this was the right decision.

This guy faced a lot of threats in Estonia. Local bloggers wrote that he could get deported from Estonia. Why didn't ACF support this guy? I don't comment on what other people do. This whole Russian flag narrative was fake. People were looking for a problem, and they found one.

When Yashin chose a thumbnail for the protest announcement, he picked a picture from the 2014 Peace march in Moscow. There were both Russian and Ukrainian flags at the march. Ilya realized that he might have made a mistake and replaced the thumbnail in a couple of hours. This was enough for some people like Morozov, who is getting paid by Khodorkovsky.

And Medvedev, who is also paid by Khodorkovsky, wrote tons of articles about us calling people to bring Russian flags to the protests. They tried to turn this into a scandal. I decided not to argue with them and to talk about our future steps. This is why I didn't say anything about this case.

Don't you feel like you could have gained some points if you defended this guy from bullying? People in Russia care about their flag a lot. Some people are fighting under the flag, and others just live under this flag. You would send a signal that you defend people who care about the Russian flag.

I don't believe that politics is about winning some points. I'm trying to have a wider picture. I have a long-term strategy, and I don't like making quick decisions to gain some followers. Why wouldn't you help a person? You could have helped him.

I feel like he's a victim of manipulation. He was used as a tool when he brought the flag to the front row. He had no idea of the context in Berlin, and he got into trouble. It all comes down to the context. Estonian occupation. The Russian flag is a very sensitive topic in Baltic countries.

This teenager got used by the people who wanted to start a scandal. This young guy is a victim. You could have helped him. You could have said, 'Get your hands off this guy!' Who should I tell this to? What do you mean?

He's a Russian citizen who cares about the Russian flag. He got bullied and threatened for bringing the flag to the protest. He's a young guy, and some older people can defend him. They can help him and show the others that ACF cares about them. This would show why ACF exists in the first place.

People would support an organization that cares about them. ACF supports a lot of people. ACF supports Russian political prisoners. ACF supports the interests of all Russians. In various international events, our leaders say that Putin is not Russia. Russians are not inferior.

The public campaign defending a teenager who hasn't faced any problems would lead to a negative result. It would lead to even more repressions against Russians in Estonia. This would definitely happen. Why? We remember what happened to TV Rain in Latvia. Baltic countries have the history of occupation and the crimes of the Soviet regime.

They are now very worried about such activists. They see this as a signal. This is obvious. Did Latvian people make TV Rain leave the country? Or did the authorities make this decision? The authorities made this decision before the elections. They felt like this was the right move before the elections.

They felt like people would agree with them on this decision. Unfortunately, they won the elections. We saw that people who made TV Rain leave Latvia won the next elections. Shouldn't we still defend TV Rain nevertheless? I defended TV Rain.

Okay, but you've just said that speaking out against anti-Russian repressions would lead to the new repressions. Can't you tell Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian authorities that they are wrong? I can. And I did. You said that they could have gone mad if you protected the guy.

We have to take the context into account. We should always consider the consequences of our actions. This guy is luckily fine. Had we made this story big, some stupid politicians would likely make the situation even worse for Russians in Estonia. This is quite clear to me. You don't have to agree with me.

This sounds like censorship. It doesn't. This sounds like setting our priorities right. Life is short, and there is a lot of stuff to do. I want to spend my time working on something more effective. I don't want to bang my head against the wall. I want to do something that would make the most sense to me.

Some people criticize us for not defending Russians in Europe. And others criticize us for not fighting for Ukraine in Kursk. They claim that Ukraine is the only force fighting Putin. They tell us to fight him at the front line. Do you think that these claims are equally unfair? Do you feel like they are the same?

They are both delusional. Wow. I felt like defending Russians in Europe was one of your primary goals in emigration. In general, isn't it true? How can you compare it to fighting for Ukraine? I felt like people expected you to support Russians in Europe.

I disagree with you. ACF sets up all the goals. Our primary goal is to represent and to support Russians in Russia. There are much more of them. Let's step back for a minute. I'm going to say something that might sound sad. I'm not trying to win any points here.

I'm not afraid to say what I think. I believe that the Beautiful Russia of the Future will be built by Russians who stayed in the country. Not by those who left. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the majority of Russian emigrant organizations didn't play any major role in politics. The reason behind it is very simple: there are much more Russians inside the country than outside.

They don't need to go anywhere. It would take some time for the emigrants to come back. There are at least 30-40 million people in Russia who don't support Putin and the war. About a million Russians left the country. The majority of them are not planning to come back to Russia. They didn't want to go to war; they moved to Europe, where they are learning a new language and working at a new job.

They now live in Amsterdam, Tel Aviv, or Mountain View. The political activists, Russian politicians, Twitter users - there are less than 100 thousand of them. These people have settled down in other countries. I'm one of them. We're running very fast to stand still. This is getting harder and harder every day.

My chances of playing a big role in Russia are shrinking every day. So we should now be focused on helping Russians stay informed. We represent them in the international events, and we protect their rights. We are focused on Russians in Russia. Alexei and his team gathered this large group of supporters when they traveled around the country.

He made millions of people interested in politics. The majority of our followers live in Russia. They haven't left the country, and they're not planning to leave. This puts us in a very challenging position. We used to live in Russia, and our donors lived in Russia, too. We lived among our donors and our supporters.

We were young Russian politicians who were supported by young Russians. They would donate money because we were similar to them. Nowadays, ACF wants to support Russians in Russia. This is our primary goal. We want to represent them and to protect them. We want to prepare for the future that will someday come.

We don't know when it's going to happen, but we've got to be ready. At the same time, we are being supported by Russians outside of Russia. The majority of our donors live outside of Russia. I've got to be honest with them. Guys, we're not providing you any services. We're not solving your visa issues because of your donations.

Are you talking about Russians outside of Russia? Yes. Your donations are not going to be used to help you. Your donation is your investment in keeping ACF alive. ACF would continue to work with Russians in Russia. We will continue creating a foundation for building a democracy once Putin is gone. This is very important to me.

I'm sorry, but I'm going to need a little more time to talk about it. The metaphor that I like to bring up is the Foundation saga by Asimov. This is a series of novels about a Galactic Empire. There was a terrible show based on the book. This is the plot of the book: a scientist named Hari Seldon creates a new science.

Asimov wrote the books in the 1940s. This science was called psychohistory. This was a new and effective mathematics of sociology. He came to the Emperor and told him that the model predicted the collapse of the Empire. The suburbs of the Empire didn't understand why they should provide you with all the food. The trading market was very unfair.

This is actually how the Roman Empire collapsed. The expansion allowed the Empire to grow. But when it reached a certain size, it became inefficient. Here we are, talking about the Roman Empire. So the mathematician tells the Emperor that the Empire was about to fall apart very soon.

The Emperor told him he didn't believe him but also asked him what could be done about the situation. Seldon told him that the model showed that the Galaxy would face 30 thousand years of warfare. Humanity will forget how to travel in space and will forget how to build nuclear plants. People would be killing each other, eating each other, and having sex with each other.

The Emperor asked him: does the model say how to fix this? And Seldon says yes. The Foundation, which is basically the Internet. And we store all of our knowledge on a distant planet that won't be involved in the wars. We would be able to keep our knowledge and build a new empire around this planet.

So all these wars would only continue for a thousand years instead of 30 thousand. The Emperor asked him: why do you care? You're 74. And Hari Seldon said that he cared. We don't expect anything good happening in Russia. Putin's regime will be over once he's gone. Everyone will be fighting for power. There will be internal conflicts.

I hope there will be no civil war. We can take meaningful steps today to aim at preventing such consequences. We can create horizontal structures. We can teach people to coordinate. This is what our headquarters had been doing for many years. We built horizontal structures and campaigned at elections.

We can keep people sane. We can keep them informed. So once the regime collapses, the consequences would be not as violent. This is our global mission. We are not going to help Russians abroad open bank accounts. This doesn't sound too nice.

We only have one life. We need to focus on our primary goal. Even though it doesn't sound nice for some people. Thank God there are many other organizations to help Russian emigrants. Free Russia Foundation aims at helping Russian emigrants abroad. There are many organizations that help Russians abroad.

ACF is focused on Russia. People in Russia. Creating institutions in Russia. Don't you feel like it's a dead end? You have the tools to help the people outside of Russia. What tools do you have to help the people inside of Russia? I have just tried to tell you. We are keeping Russians informed on what is going on.

We are trying to keep them sane. And we're still working on some projects in Russia despite all the difficulties. Don't you feel like when they see a Russian guy in Estonia suffering from bringing a Russian flag to the protest? And you saying that you didn't support this guy because it would only get things worse.

Don't you feel like Russian people no longer need your help? You no longer understand each other. I don't feel this way. I spend a lot of time studying what is going on in Russia. And I disagree with you. I believe that the majority of people in Russia don't care about the conflicts among Russian emigrants.

They care about their family members being sent to the war. They care about inflation. They care about hundreds of thousands of veterans with PTSD coming back from war. They care about not going to prison after leaving a message in a school chat. They care about having access to information and not going crazy. This is what they care about.

They don't care about Luka Andreev, unfortunately. I know this very well based on our sociology. Of course, they don't care about emigrants fighting each other. However, they care about a guy with the flag. Some care, and others don't. Don't overestimate it. Are you sure about it? I am sure.

Okay. I want to ask you about working in Russia. Last October, a 15-year-old guy got arrested in Kazan during the BRICS summit. He drew graffiti supporting Navalny. ACF posted a picture saying that this graffiti was made by your underground headquarters. Do you realize that you framed him with your tweets?

His crime could have been regarded as vandalism, but instead, he's going to be prosecuted for participating in an extremist organization. Victim blaming is about blaming the victim. The government is to blame for prosecuting this guy. They sentenced him to house arrest.

He is being illegally prosecuted. We cannot confirm that he works for our underground headquarters. We don't know this. These are completely anonymous structures. We don't know if the person who sent us the picture was the same person who drew the graffiti. And the police knows this, too.

They can't prove anything. They have a target to send people to prison, and they do it. We don't know if he did this or not. You posted a picture. Someone sent us the picture. 'Protests in Kazan from our activists. You are the best! Sign up.' And you left a link to a website that is unfortunately considered an extremist resource in Russia.

What is this? According to Russian laws, this guy was not involved in extremism. They destroyed his life because this is what they do. While we try to analyze what he did wrong. This is not true. The police were really strict during the summit. We don't know anything about this case.

We don't know what they are prosecuting him for. This is a big problem. Any actions in Russia bear a huge risk. We always warn our activists about these risks. People get randomly arrested for minor crimes. This is a big problem that we have lots of political prisoners in Russia.

Vladimir Putin and his regime are the root of the problem. Come on! Did I disagree with it? I said that ACF could have been more careful to keep this guy safe. Why would you post this tweet? Why would you promote your headquarters? Don't you realize that you framed this guy?

I don't. I don't feel like we framed him. I realize that the regime is now a terrorist state. They are sending random people to prison. There are thousands of graffiti in Russia. They picked a random guy. You posted a picture of a new graffiti.

There are thousands of graffiti in Russia, and they would send five guys to prison to threaten the rest. There are millions of anti-Putin publications online. They would send a hundred people to prison to threaten the rest. This is terrorism. It is unpredictable and random. They want everyone to be scared of the regime.

There is no logic behind their choice of victims. This allows them to threaten everyone. This is what terrorists do. They blow up a plane and make everyone scared of flying. The Russian state is a terrorist state, and we are now trying to blame someone else. This is wrong.

You've just talked about taking into account the context in Estonia. The context in Russia is such that anyone can go to prison as an extremist for being related to ACF. This is the reality. I asked you why you posted a picture of a new graffiti. You are not listening to me.

With 99.5% probability, this guy is not related to ACF. They made it up. How can we protect anyone from this? This makes it even worse. They would claim that he is related to ACF based on the tweet. The Russian court would consider this tweet as the evidence of his relation to ACF.

This is today's reality in Russia. And now we're blaming the victim for wearing a short skirt. The rapist could have thought that she wanted to have sex! You take the Estonian context into account but not Russian. The Estonian context is easier to predict. It's easier to take into account.

Okay. What would you say about ACF's current position? It's pretty bad. ACF has always tried to represent Russian society. ACF has spent a lot of effort to not only represent the center of Moscow but a wide group of anti-Putin Russians. These people are now struggling a lot. They lost Alexei Navalny. They lost their hope.

They lost three years of their life. A lot of them lost their family members. Their life is hell now. ACF feels the same way. We lost our leader. We are facing a lot of trouble with our public image because we still want to work in Russia, but we can only be supported by people outside of Russia.

We have to prove to them that we are an important institution that might potentially play a big role in the future. ACF is struggling as much as many other Russians. We are trying our best to carry on. We have a lot of plans for 2025, and we are going to do it soon.

We can't waste the unthinkable sacrifice that Alexei made. I've been here for 11 or 12 years already. I've spent a lot of energy, money, and everything on it. I don't want to waste it. I don't want to give up and let it fall apart. I want this work to be meaningful. This is why we still exist.

It's getting harder every month. Everyone is struggling now. Are you responsible for this poor position of ACF? Of course, I am partly responsible. How exactly? I made mistakes that we talked about. I wasn't seeking publicity that I faced in 2021. I wasn't ready for it.

I made some mistakes immediately. And then, this whole Fridman thing. I made wrong decisions in Zheleznyak-gate. And I failed to notice that we were facing a campaign against us. This is the responsibility that we have talked about for the last few hours. I admit it.

The best way for me to take the responsibility is to get better. I have to become a better version of myself and think of new ideas. I have to grit my teeth and carry on. I feel like I owe it to myself, to Alexei, to Yulia, to my family, to my colleagues, to everyone who spent so much time on this organization.

I spent a lot of days under arrest. I lost a lot of stuff. We often say that being optimistic is required for working with us. This is unbearable unless you're an optimist. I feel like there is hope. This is not going to last forever.

We haven't only made mistakes that people like to talk about. We also did a lot of right things that unfortunately get less attention than our mistakes. Between 2017 and 2021, we built a huge network of activists all around the country. We taught hundreds of thousands to campaign, and this will play some role in the future.

The later this future comes, the lesser role they are going to play. This is why we have to make Putin more stressed and prone to mistakes that would end his regime. I'm optimistic about 2025. It is related to 2022 in a similar way 1917 was related to 1914. This is also a three-year period.

In 1917, a tiny group of Russian opposition was still abroad with no hope of coming back. In a couple of months, everything changed. The people and the regime could no longer continue this way. Do you still believe in such analogies? I'm being very careful with such analogies.

I am seeing what is happening now in sociology. People are getting tired for obvious reasons. Putin doesn't tell the people what's his plan to end the war. People are worried about the veterans coming back from war. People remember facing the veterans of the Afghan war and the Chechen war. This time we are going to face much more of them.

My wife's department conducted a survey where they called people and asked them: How would you describe your feelings now? Are you stable or are you anxious? About 73 or 77% of people said they were anxious. Doesn't sound too good after 26 years of stability. We can see that people are getting sick of it.

Putin's increasing military payouts and hiring North Korean troops. He is importing weapons from Iran and North Korea. He is struggling, and the system is overheated. This is why I brought up WWI. Putin's war in Ukraine is the war of attrition. Just as WWI. Nobody wins at wars of attrition.

Such wars can only be lost. Such wars are about who collapses first. Russia entered World War I on the winning side - among France and Great Britain. Russian fought for the Triple Entente. However, Russia obviously lost the war. We lost a lot of territories and quit. The monarchy failed to solve the problems that it faced.

Many countries fought on the winners' side and still lost the war. The empires lost this war. Authoritarian regimes lost this war. Franz Joseph I of Austria, the Osman Emperor, and Nikolay II all failed at managing their countries three years into the big war. These regimes collapsed because they couldn't handle the challenges that they faced.

Putin's regime is corrupt and ineffective. We know this very well. This system is subject to his decisions. Putin tells everyone what to do. This system is on the verge of reaching the peak of ineffectiveness. The economy is falling apart; they can't stop the inflation. They don't have enough guns.

There's a lot of similar problems in Ukraine, but I'm a Russian politician, not Ukrainian. I believe that if we continue to fight Putin, we make this terrorist regime collapse. After this collapse, we will face a chance to change the situation for the better. This motivates me to carry on. I believe in what I do.

Three years into the war. Don't you feel like examples from the past no longer work? Everyone has been bringing up these examples for the last three years. But this situation is very different. A lot of people made military forecasts based on the past wars. This is delusional. Everything is different today.

We are living in a digital era now. We talked about it today. Everything is different today. Why would you look at the past and reassure yourself? I am not reassuring myself. You just said that you were planning to repeat 1917. I'm being optimistic, and it helps me carry on. It helps me not to give up.

I like being optimistic. My optimism is based on some reasons and examples. I'm not a bold optimist. My optimism is based on the reasons that I have mentioned before. In general, Putin's state is extremely ineffective. This state is facing challenges of increasing difficulty.

Putin is not getting younger, and it's hard for him to manage everything. When I'm struggling, I like to think about them struggling, too. They don't have enough tanks; nobody wants to go to war even for five million roubles. They need to start a new wave of mobilization, but this is too risky.

A lot of IT specialists left the country, and they also lack tractor drivers because they sent them all to war. They are delusional about controlling everything. They have managed to survive because they have loads of money. They have been solving all these problems with money.

However, this is an illusion of control. Such systems always collapse. This happened in Syria recently. I have a faith. You can call this religious. I have a faith in the historical process that would lead to a collapse of Putin's regime. So if you face the chance of doing something once it happens, what would ACF do?

We're not scared of taking part in elections. We campaigned a lot in challenging conditions, and we would often outperform all the expectations. We are not limited by a small group of voters. We know how to get more votes. Alexei was very good at it, and we learnt from him. I won some elections, too.

So what is the future of ACF? I can see ACF taking part in the elections and being elected into the parliament. Do you believe that you would get enough votes to get into the parliament? Of course, we would. There is no doubt about it. Do you think people would vote for you personally?

I'm not going to run for elections. I like being a manager in campaigns. Would you be on the list of party members in the elections? I don't want this. Don't want what? I don't want to be elected anywhere. Don't you want to be elected into the parliament? I don't.

What position would you like to be in? I had a dream, and I talked about it in some interview. I had a dream to defeat Putin, build the Beautiful Russia of the Future, and then to move to Silicon Valley. Where I would run a start-up. I have a few ideas that I would like to finally implement. I would finally run a business and make a lot of money.

So you would move to the US like everyone else. I'm still young enough to do it. Every year I'm becoming more skeptical about this plan. However, I still dream about it. Isn't it weird to dream of making Russia great and then moving to Mountain View? Making Russia a better place would be good for a lot of people and the whole world.

Russia deserves it. There is no doubt about it. It would be great if Russia became a European democracy. Should I become the head of the President's Office or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs? There's a lot of people who would be good at it.

I'm asking you about moving to the US. Isn't it weird to have no plans to live in Russia after all these years? This is just a dream. I would travel to Russia freely and spend there as much time as I want. I want to be able to travel to Yekaterinburg a lot. I have lived in lots of different cities and countries.

It is easy for me to travel now. It doesn't really matter where I would live in five or ten years. What do you think about Boris Zimin? He did a lot of good things for us. Coming back to the conversation about our good and bad deeds. I'm extremely thankful to Boris Zimin for helping us for many years.

In 2022, he decided to stop supporting us for reasons that I disagree with. I find his reasoning irrational and wrong, but he has a right to have this opinion. Boris Zimin gave a few interviews where he was unfair about ACF. He realizes that he made a wrong decision, and he wants to prove himself that he was right.

It looks quite funny now. He talks about being disappointed in ACF all the time. Media would always write, 'Zimin stopped supporting ACF,' even though he did it back in 2022. He has a right to have this opinion. He has still done a lot of good things for ACF, Redcollegiya, and many others.

I'm very thankful for this. Last October, he wrote a big text about the Zheleznyak-gate. This is a huge text that went viral. I'll sum it up briefly: 'ACF has become very non-transparent, which contradicts the fundamental rules of the organization.' 'Alexei's legacy is wasted.' Do you agree with this claim?

I don't agree with it. Boris has a right to have this opinion, but I don't agree with it. The wasted legacy has become a cliché. After Putin killed Alexei, a lot of people have given advice on dealing with his legacy. I guess these people own some shares of this legacy. Alexei's legacy cannot be wasted.

It can only get bigger. He was a great man. As great as Nelson Mandela. His legacy is only going to get bigger with time. His ideas, his approach will be remembered forever. Nobody owns Alexei's legacy. Everyone who liked him shares the legacy. This legacy cannot be wasted.

ACF is an organization that he founded for a specific goal and a specific mission. Our mission now is to continue his work. I hate this cliché about wasting Alexei's legacy. I don't think that this is appropriate. Zimin writes: 'Since 2022, I was telling Leonid that trust is one of the basic values of politicians.'

'I failed to explain this to him.' Can you evaluate the political capital of ACF in January of 2025? Before this interview, we talked about having different backgrounds: I come from mathematics, you come from journalism. It's hard for me to evaluate on such matters. This is very abstract.

We can only check this at the election. This is the only way to measure our political capital. This is too abstract now. This is a spherical cow. We don't have to talk about abstract sociology. I would like to share my personal thoughts. I have liked ACF for many years.

I don't know if I could call myself your supporter. I guess I could. I respected you for your investigations. I respected Alexei personally for what he was doing. I respected the whole ACF team for their investigations. I took part in the protests that ACF would also take part in.

I even called people to take part in some protests. I was always understanding when ACF or Alexei were making mistakes. I knew that ACF was facing a lot of pressure. I supported ACF a lot, and I spent a lot of time telling people that ACF was wishing the best for Russia. I did a lot to support ACF, even though if I didn't do it in public.

Once Alexei went to prison and could no longer work for ACF, most of his work was now done by Zhdanov, Pevchikh, and you. I didn't want to support ACF as much as I did before. In the beginning of 2025, I don't feel like I want to support ACF. My question is: You can put this as a disclaimer in the beginning of the interview. This is quite important for this interview.

My question is: is there anything wrong with me or with you? I might sound funny. This would sound like a meme. It's not you. It's not us. It's Putin. I know I sound like a guy who blames everything on Putin. But this is true. Putin destroyed competition and the opportunity for us to do what we did.

He poisoned Alexei. He sent him to prison. He killed him. He started the war. He forced many people to leave the country. He traumatized a lot of people and made their life much worse. He killed thousands of Ukrainians and made millions leave their homes. He also killed many Russians and made many people leave their country.

This all affects the mental health of Russian people. A lot of people are struggling now. Did you just say... People used to have hope when Navalny was alive. People voted for him in 2013, then they watched his investigations. He was a daring and cool man. And then people began to lose their hope.

People need to have hope. A lot of people needed to find an explanation for why they lost their hope. ACF has always tried to stay loyal to our principles. And for some people, ACF became a target. Why am I, Vasya Ivanov, an emigrant now? ACF promised me to defeat Putin.

I donated to you and supported you, but you failed to defeat him. Now I have to learn a new language, and my kids go to a public school instead of a private school. Do you think that this is my logic? I told you how I feel. I never hoped that you would defeat Putin.

Wait. I only relied on myself and my skills. With all due respect, my life was never based on what ACF promised. ACF was a small part of my views on this world. I'm sorry, but what you just said has nothing to do with me, and I thank God for that. I'm not blaming ACF for the problems that I have.

You tried to say that I do. Russian society, that we are a part of, was traumatized by the last four or five years. There is no more space for public politics in Russia. There is a war now. It all had an effect on many people, and we live among them. This is a very natural reaction.

My reply is that we understand that people are disappointed. In us, in the whole Beautiful Russia of the Future concept. Some people say that Navalny shouldn't have come back to Russia. They say that he ruined everything. He promised a bright future, but here we are now. This is victim blaming.

Some people dislike ACF. I'm not blind. Sometimes I feel like I'm one of the most hated people on the Internet. Do I like it? I know that I work hard. I know what I believe in. I'm doing my best, even though sometimes I fail. Am I upset? I am. What else can I say?

I know the big picture. We are all miserable now. I know who is to blame. I promise to do something about it to get your trust back. I will try to do something that you would find interesting or relevant. Some people wrote us that they were disappointed in us until they took part in the Noon Against Putin.

Some people watched Yulia Navalnaya's speech when she addressed the world leaders and decided to support her now. This is all very personal. You are right; trust is very important for us as a political organization. We have to earn this trust with our projects.

We are now thinking about new projects to attract new people and to win back our past supporters. We are aware of the situation. And the final question: what is power? Being able to tell real from fake and fighting for the truth. So yes, truth is power. Believing in reaching truth is power.

Thank you. Thanks.