Grigory Yavlinsky web-site, 26.04.2016

Today marks 30 years since the Chernobyl tragedy, which in many aspects has been still going on.

Chernobyl has special social and political significance. The response to the disaster has demonstrated, on the one hand, solidarity of people and their dedication, and on the other, deceitful and inhuman nature of the state.

The lack of freedom of speech and independent media led to a situation when on May 1, 1986, thousands of people marched in a [traditional First of May] demonstration in Kyiv and other cities that had already got into the Chernobyl radiation zone, exposing themselves and their children to a terrible danger. And further, for a very long time, the official lie about Chernobyl was total and lethal…

30 years after the events of our country has been quickly and decisively returning back to the same standards: the society has been consistently deprived of free media and true information about what is happening.

This process started long ago. Since 1996, the Kremlin has corrupted press in the country on a mass scale, and immediately after the 2000 presidential election, the government began oppressing and destroying the media as was the case with the NTV [independent television channel turned into the Kremlin’s propaganda media].

Today we are witnessing that they are doing the same to RBC, trying to change the editorial policies of one of the last serious professional media left in the country.

Non-transparency of the authorities, a closed nature of the state in terms of information, low price of human life, secret burials of those who died in the military and political adventures, important decisions taken without any discussion – that is the model of the relationship between a person and the state, which has been imposed on the country by the authors of the senseless and hopeless anti-European policy.

The [Russian] authorities, to the accompaniment of patriotic rhetoric, selfishly and for their own benefit established a political system in Russia which treats people in an absolutely cynical way, without any respect, and did everything so that citizens would not trust their own state.

God forbid, but if something like Chernobyl happens, we find ourselves once again in mortal danger, and will not even learn about it… Maybe the Internet will save us, in case it is not censored, as they are already planning to do.
Source: http://www.yavlinsky.ru/news/rossia/chernobyl