Grigory Yavlinsky’s web-site, 24.02.2023

Photo by Daniel Ceng Shou-Yi / dpa

This happened not on 24 February, 2022. This happened much earlier – in Chechnya from 1994 to 1996 and then again from 1999 to 2006; in Georgia in 2008; in Crimea and Donbass in 2014; in Syria in 2015; when the Russian Constitution was changed in 2020, and during the [so-called] “Smart Voting” in 2021 [calling to vote for anyone but the United Russia party and ignoring the fact that other parliamentary parties supported United Russia] that supported Putin’s main allies in the special military operation… But on 24 February, 2022, a catastrophe occurred. Those who were killed cannot be returned back to life. Broken lives cannot be glued together.

A year after the start of the Russian “special military operation”, it has become clear from [Vladimir Putin’s] message to the Federal Assembly that there will be no end to what has been happening – the human and material resources of the country would be thrown to achieve. It is made plain that today’s reality is a new way of living in Russia. And in a situation where the “special operation” becomes the foundation of the country’s political regime, we must understand and remember the following:

1. There is nothing more valuable than a human life.
2. In the 21st century, the main things are freedom, human dignity and creativity. Everything else is secondary.
3. Ukraine is and will be a sovereign and free state.
4. A ceasefire agreement is necessary. This is the first step towards saving people’s lives, any talks will be possible only after this.
5. If we don’t stop now, months later the number of victims will be even greater, but no one will achieve significant results.

We need to achieve only one thing to save lives and stop the killings – a ceasefire. This is the path to peace. Even when peace seems to be something impossible, unthinkable or utopian. We have to believe in it.

“Hope is the only immortal part in a person. Nothing can kill it, because it is not from this world, it is from the future. A person has everything which is needed to do good deeds… For the sake of hope, it is worth living,” one of the most significant thinkers of our time, Zygmunt Bauman, rightly asserted. Stay human!

Eternal memory to the dead, recovery to the wounded, and return home to refugees.

READ OTHER TEXTS BY YABLOKO LEADERS ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE START OF RUSSIA’S “SPECIAL OPERATION” IN UKRAINE:

Nikolai Rybakov 

Boris Vishnevsky 

Lev Shlosberg 

Maxim Kruglov 

Grigory Yavlinsky

is Chairman of the Federal Political Committee of the Russian United Democratic Party Yabloko, Vice President of Liberal International,

PhD in Economics,

Professor of the National Research University Higher School of Economics.