‘I feel so sorry for Putin’. Kremlin youth movement icon Vasily Yakemenko admits to lucrative government work and political repressions, questions president’s grip on current events

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For years, Vasily Yakemenko was one of the most prominent figures in Russian youth politics, leading government outreach efforts and launching the infamous pro-Kremlin movement “Nashi.” Last week, more than a decade after leaving politics, Yakemenko granted a two-hour interview to YouTuber Stanislav Rozhenkov. In their conversation, Yakemenko openly acknowledged that Nashi activists acted under orders to suppress opposition protests and silence dissidents. He also said he’s still living off the “gold and diamonds” and “crazy amount of money” he made while working for the government. Yakemenko even expressed sympathy for Vladimir Putin, repeating that Russia’s president “doesn’t understand what’s going on.” Meduza reviews some of Yakemenko’s most surprising remarks during the interview and examines what we know about how it happened at all.

Vasily Yakemenko told YouTuber Stanislav Rozhenkov he was fired because he failed to mobilize the counterprotesters needed to suppress mass opposition demonstrations after fraud in Russia’s 2011 parliamentary elections. “I didn’t defend the Motherland,” Yakemenko explained:

Whoever learned to organize, professionally plan, and stage mass demonstrations in 2007, 2008, and 2009 was going to gain a monopoly on managing the political process. It was supposed to be a tool for loyalty, suppression, and propaganda. I was supposed to rally hundreds of thousands of people to beat the crap out of all the “white-ribbon” [democracy] activists and anyone else running their mouths without a damned clue, saying how we’re supposed to run this country.

Yakemenko also denied that Nashi was created by Vladislav Surkov, a former longtime presidential adviser often regarded as the mastermind of the Putin regime’s early ideological agenda. According to Yakemenko, Surkov lost his official position and influence on domestic policy in the early 2010s as punishment for trying to establish a two-party system:

They didn’t forgive Surkov for his vision of Russia under a two-party system, that Medvedev could become the leader of the second party, and that Mr. Vladimir Putin needed to scale back his ambitions a bit and recognize that building relationships in Russia doesn’t have to revolve around forms of endless oppression or coercion. That was Surkov’s point of view, and it’s how I see it. The reason he was ousted from everywhere was that this perspective wasn’t merely inadmissible but considered unmentionable.

Yakemenko was also unusually candid about how lucrative his time in government was. “I stashed away a crazy amount of money in gold — not diamonds, but gold. From time to time, I sell a bit. I melt off a piece and live on it,” he told Rozhenkov, perhaps joking. “I built myself a house — and not just one,” he added. The Nashi founder also referred to himself as a “degenerate” and a “crook” and said government officials are no different:

If I hadn’t at some point acutely realized that I’m a total degenerate — a degenerate working in the government, working in the Kremlin — I would never in my life have come to understand even the little I understand today. Before I left government, I thought everyone was more or less like me — crooks, plain crooks, just like me.

In addition to his admissions of money “stashed away” and “crooks” in public service, Yakemenko even spoke disparagingly about Vladimir Putin’s capacity as a leader, repeating multiple times that Russia’s president “doesn’t understand” the challenges facing the nation (though Yakemenko was careful to lay most of the blame on incompetent and corrupt aides):

I feel so sorry for him. He doesn’t understand what’s happening. He genuinely doesn’t understand what’s happening. He’s this decisive guy who fucking wants to get things done, but he doesn’t even understand where or what he’s doing wrong. And then he’s surrounded by these guys, who are totally out of touch with reality, giving him advice — each one dumber than the last. Whatever you try to fix, nothing works, because everywhere you look there’s either a guy like me sitting there without a clue, or it’s someone who just wants to steal something. And he has no idea what needs to be done.

Evgeny Smirnov, a lawyer with the human rights project First Department, told journalists at Agentstvo Media that Yakemenko essentially confessed to creating an extremist organization to persecute political opponents. However, thanks to statutes of limitations, the Nashi founder is unlikely to face criminal liability.

The political significance of Yakemenko’s interview is less clear-cut. Stanislav Rozhenkov told Agentstvo Media that he recorded his conversation with Yakemenko in Moscow, though he declined to say who initiated the interview. His channel says anyone wishing to join the show as a guest should “contact management.” Agentstvo Media journalists found that the Russian media describes Rozhenkov as a “specialist in amplifying expert influence.”

Rozhenkov’s most recent interview before his sitdown with Yakemenko was in mid-December with Yuri Kiselev, the son of drummer Vladimir Kiselev. During Putin’s early presidency, Kiselev Sr. headed a federal enterprise that organized concerts in Red Square. (In June 2015, he acquired a controlling stake in one of Russia’s largest radio conglomerates, Russian Media Group.)

Nashi was active from 2005 to 2013. At a 2006 meeting with Putin, Yakemenko stated that the movement’s goals were to encourage a strong academic and professional work ethic, “to explain to the younger generation that the question of whether to serve in the military should not even arise,” and to foster young people’s appreciation of Russia as a “multiethnic country.” Putin added that he believed Nashi’s purpose included addressing problems like alcoholism, drug addiction, and “radical manifestations in interethnic relations and religious issues.” The president also told the movement’s activists that Russia was counting on them to help build “a civil society infused with patriotism and concern for the country.”

From the start, Nashi activists were accused of attacking opposition members. For example, in the summer of 2005, young people in masks and T-shirts with Nashi symbols assaulted National Bolshevik Party activists outside the Community Party building’s reception office. Boris Nemtsov accused Nashi members of involvement in the attack. The movement was also implicated in numerous negative publicity stunts, such as doxxing journalist Yulia Taratuta and distributing toilet paper bearing the newspaper Kommersant’s logo. Nashi’s summer conferences also attracted significant attention and criticism.

Update: State Duma Deputy Bisultan Khamzaev has petitioned Russia’s Federal Investigative Committee to investigate Yakemenko’s remarks to Rozhenkov, arguing that the Nashi founder openly admits to corruption and “flaunts it with extreme cynicism.” In his letter to the authorities, Khamzaev accuses Yakemenko of “insulting the very structure of the Russian state” and making “baseless accusations of corruption and bribery against high-ranking officials.”