oliver: i talked about alexei navalny. >> alexei navalny is perhaps the man vladimir putin fears the russia. he is an opposition candidate. he is touring the hinterlands of russia trying to get his name recognition out there. he is barred from going on television. kremlin officials try not to say his name. less than half the russian population know who he is. oliver: you must be onto to something if you are not allowed on russian tv. picking up on's something. tell us what the protest movement entails. >> it is all about corruption. he has just put out a film talking about the, really detailing the eye-popping corruption and the money that putin and his supporters have kind of taken from the state. this protest movement happened in 80 cities across eight time zones. it's a big country. that surprised the kremlin, and that would probably surprise navalny too. about 60,000 people came out across 80 cities. about 1000 people were arrested. there is an election next year. oliver: what is he doing right now if he does not know he will be able to run? what is he trying to accomplish? >> he

in russia, though, last weekend alexei navalny, the most prominent of a relatively small number of politiciansesident putin, produced a report accusing dmitry medvedev, prime minister turned president turned prime minister again, of corruption. he urged people to take to the streets to protest. for muscovites, that resulted in more than 1,000 arrests. the week ended with mr navalny serving the start of a 15—day prison sentence. "those who go outside the law must be punished", growled mr putin, from the arctic. lexander, there are going to be more protests, inevitably. that is the nature of the beast, once protests have started, they always continue. what will be the russian response? we're already seeing handcuffs on mr navalny. do keep ratcheting up that reaction? first of all, corruption is a problem in russia. nobody will deny this. but russia is one of the few countries in the world, maybe china as well, where a big politicians, or cabinet ministers, actually, bankers, governors of vast regions are arrested and put injailfor corruption. give me another example of any country in the western

the guy who was behind the last one's anti-corruption opposition later leader alexei navalny.e was given a 15-day prison sentence. he is still in jail now. no word whether they're going to try to stretch out his sentence longer. in addition to him being in jail, basically everybody who works for him also got put in jail. more than a dozen of his staffers and anti-corruption group got arrest and put in jail. they all too tonight are still in jail. their offices were apparently ransacked. all their paperwork and computers were taken by the russian police. this is the sort of thing that would have lit up the u.s. state department as recently as a few months ago. but so far in this case, the united states has released exactly one statement about russia's treatment of its citizens in this regard. it was from the state department. it came out in the middle of the night russia time, and there has been nothing other than that. russian president vladimir putin threatening a further crackdown on protest, threatening to make penalties for protesting even stronger. even with that brand-ne

even just the recent arrests that you were talking about, we saw the offices of alexei navalny's organization ransack and have all their computers and paperwork and staff getting arrested. open russia getting banned this week. the raid on your office stls this week. how, how do you maintain any sort of momentum, any sort of organizing structure against that? >> well, i mean, the other side, if you just look at it formally, the other side does have a massive advantage. they have all the so-called law enforcement agencies. they have the entire propaganda machine. they have the whole power of the state on their side. but what we have i think is something much more important, and that is the truth. and that increasing realization among the people, especially the young people, this new generation, the people who we saw on the streets of russia the end of march and the people who we will see on the streets again tomorrow are predominantly young people, college kids, high school students in many cases. people who have not seen anything else except putin, who have watched the same face on that televi

the guy who was behind the last one's anti-corruption opposition later leader alexei navalny.in jail now. no word whether they're going to try to stretch out his sentence longer. in addition to him being in jail, basically everybody who works for him also got put in jail. more than a dozen of his staffers and anti-corruption group got arrest and put in jail. they all too tonight are still in jail. their offices were apparently ransacked. all their paperwork and computers were taken by the russian police. this is the sort of thing that would have lit up the u.s. state department as recently as a few months ago. but so far in this case, the united states has released exactly one statement about russia's treatment of its citizens in this regard. it was from the state department. it came out in the middle of the night russia time, and there has been nothing other than that. russian president vladimir putin threatening a further crackdown on protest, threatening to make penalties for protesting even stronger. even with that brand-new threat, there is no response from our white hous