Press Release, 3.03.2022

Photo by Marina Movdavskaya / Kommersant

Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov sent appeals to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russian Ombudsman Tatyana Moskalkova, International Red Cross President Peter Maurer, head of the Russian Red Cross Pavel Savchuk, and WHO representative in Russia Melita Vujnovic, urging them to provide an opportunity for Yabloko for practical creation of a special humanitarian corridor for the exchange of prisoners and the bodies of the dead with Ukraine, as well as to provide evacuation routes for the civilian population.

Rybakov refers to Article 110 of the Geneva Convention, according to which prisoners of war are subject to direct repatriation.

The Yabloko leader emphasises that the party has the necessary resources and experience gained during the two Chechen wars.

“We believe that there will be much more victims without taking immediate measures to exchange prisoners, the bodies of the dead and creation of humanitarian corridors for the civilians,” Nikolai Rybakov concludes.

On 2 March, Grigory Yavlinsky, Chairman of the Federal Political Committee of the Yabloko party, put forward the initiative to give the Yabloko party the opportunity to organise a humanitarian corridor. In 1994, he participated in a similar mission in Chechnya.

It should be noted that on 27 January, almost a month before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Yabloko party submitted to the President of Russia a plan of definite actions to prevent a war with Ukraine and the West, and offered itself as an organiser and participant in the civil international negotiation process in order to prepare direct negotiations between President Putin and President Zelensky.