Press Release, 3.03.2023

On 2 March, the traditional Yabloko action of writing letters to Russian political prisoners was held at the central office of the Yabloko party, organised by the Moscow branch of the party with the support of the PolitzekInfo project. The action was dedicated to women – political prisoners, who fell into the millstones of the system. Letters to women – political prisoners and other political prisoners were written by more than 100 people. During the evening, 500 postcards were signed for 42 political prisoners.

Lawyers Maria Eismont and Olga Pelshe, ex-political prisoners Olga Bendas and Roman Pichuzhkin came to participate in the action, Alexander Kubalov performed with a musical programme. The participants of the action read out the letters of political prisoners and their poems.

Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov, Chairman of the Yabloko Federal Political Committee Grigory Yavlinsky, Deputy Chairman of the Moscow Yabloko Kirill Goncharov, members and supporters of the party and civil activists took part in the action of writing the letters.

At the initiative of the participants, a letter was drawn up to the head of the pre-trial detention centre, where Vladimir Kara-Murza, opposition politician and journalist, is imprisoned. Kara-Murza survived two attempts on his life with Novichok in 2015 and 2017. 34 signatories, including Grigory Yavlinsky, Nikolai Rybakov and Andrei Morev, Deputy Chair of the Moscow Yabloko, demanded that the defendant be transferred to a specialised medical facility due to his deteriorating health.

“We, the undersigned citizens of Russia, demand from you to adopt measures for upholding human rights: providing timely qualified medical aid to the detainee Vladimir Kara-Murza, born in 1981, in view of deterioration of his health, namely numbness in feet which emerged during his stay in the disciplinary cell. We demand his transfer to a specialised medical institution,” the letter runs.

Event organisers Anna Shatunovskaya-Byurno, Lilia Manikhina and Andrei Morev note that such traditional actions will be organised as long as there are political prisoners in our country. The next action is scheduled for 30 March.

See more photos by the Yabloko Press Service at yabloko.ru