Press Release, 25.02.2026

Photo: Nikolai Rybakov speaking at the gathering on 24 February 2026 / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

On 24 February 2026, Yabloko’s Moscow office hosted a gathering of like-minded people entitled “Four Years After 24.02.2022”. Anyone who wished to attend was welcome to come to the party office, so as not to be alone on the anniversary of the start of the special military operation. The event included a screening of the film “Odna” (“Alone”) by Anna Artemyeva, a documentary filmmaker at Novaya Gazeta.

Opening the gathering, Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov noted that such events were held annually, and that it was important for the party to invite all those who wished to attend on this day — primarily to show support and solidarity with like-minded people.

“Every day since February 2022, we have been calling for a ceasefire agreement, and we see how many people want the same,” Nikolai Rybakov said. “How does each of us have behaved during this time from the standpoint of our humanity? What choices do we make? The film we are watching today is about how a person makes their choice, and it is about the fact that everyone has the right to make that choice. True, any choice leads to one consequence or another. But I am convinced that each person, when making a choice, must remain honest with themselves. It is especially important to remain honest at a time when dehumanisation is encouraged and to help those around you. To work so that the future, firstly, exists at all, and secondly, is not the future of malice, aggression, and misanthropy.”

Photo: Guests at the evening / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

The Yabloko leader also shared that he was currently reading a book by St. Petersburg local historian Sergei Glezerov, who describes the process of reconciliation between people after World War II — a reconciliation that is only possible when people find inner strength to stop looking at one another as enemies.

Anna Artemyeva, documentary filmmaker and director of the film, spoke about the work of Novaya Gazeta and the documentary projects by the editorial team in Moscow:

“If someone had told me in 2022 that this would go on for four years and still not be over, I think I would simply have turned my face to the wall and never got up. Because everything we have been living through these four years is an extraordinarily difficult experience. Usually, talking about ourselves — about how hard things are for us — is considered shameful and can be seen as weakness. But it is necessary to talk about it. Especially because so many of us have been broken inside. How many times over these four years have we experienced a sense of boundless helplessness and hopelessness, a feeling of the utter meaninglessness of any action, of extreme loneliness, of personal humiliation and visceral fear? And yet you go on living, you preserve your position and your sense of your personality, you continue to do something. It is hard.”

Photo: Anna Artemyeva / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

Artemyeva explained that the staff of Novaya Gazeta, and this had been the case long before 24 February 2022, chose to help others without reflection or complaint, even as military operations continued and the editorial team had lost six colleagues who had given their lives for their profession.

“But it is very important to me to speak about ourselves as well — to acknowledge that we too are breaking,” she said. “The film “Odna” is also about loneliness, one of the most terrible things we are experiencing now.”

Photo: Deputy Chairman of Moscow Yabloko Yuri Shein / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

“Odna” is a deeply candid and harrowing film, it is part of a series of documentaries by Novaya Gazeta filmed across different regions over the past four years. It tells the story of Antonina Nikulina, the only resident of a Karelian village who openly spoke out against the special military operation and was fined three times as a result. Antonina Nikulina subsequently left Russia for good, and her son was killed in the special military operation.

After the screening, everyone had the opportunity to put questions to Anna Artemyeva about the filming process, about how to get people to open up in small communities where not everyone is willing to speak freely, especially on camera, and about the difficulties the documentary team had faced while working amid the ideological divisions among Karelia’s residents at the time.

Inevitably, the discussion quickly gave way to something closer to collective therapy. Many people took the microphone not to ask questions but to share their own pain and feelings — about how they had experienced 24 February 2022, about how their families had been divided between those who longed for peace and those who could not see the need for it, about what they felt today and what they hoped for tomorrow.

Photo: Anna Artemyeva answering participants’ questions / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

The gathering ended late in the evening with the guests applauding one another and sharing a common desire to bring lasting peace to the world as soon as possible.