The main conclusion that can be made by reading the last investigation of the team of Alexei Navalny: its main character, the leader of the capital’s branch of United Russia and the vice-speaker of the Moscow City Duma Andrei Metelsky, is a direct, sincere person, not going to hide his vicious inclinations from anyone. He, as it were, honestly and openly admits: yes, I am a crook and a thief! And what?! There are no confusing financial schemes, complex transactions or fake companies.

Those who like to compare Soviet propaganda with Putin canals of hatred can be recommended to see the recording of the programs of the most condo Soviet propagandists, such as Zorin or, for example, Zhukov, and then immediately turn on Solovyov with Kiselev or Skabeev with Popov and compare a purely physiological reaction. In the first case, the body of most normal people will react with yawning and falling asleep, in the second case - nausea and indomitable vomiting.

Once, one of my colleagues wrote that “the liberal project in Russia failed” and called on Russian liberals to admit this, repent and start working on mistakes. Personally, I suspect that he liked the words “project” and “failed”, and he, like many writing political analysts, simply caught a buzz from their connection to one sentence. To which I indicated him with a rather tactless irony with me.