Special for the Yabloko web-site, 04.02.2023

After Belovezh Accords of 1991 [when the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus secretly gathered in Belarus and declared that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist and established the Commonwealth of Independent States in its place as a successor entity], an authoritarian regime began to take shape in the Russian Federation, the power in this regime consisted of three intertwined branches: “systemic liberals”[people in power who called themselves “liberals” and allegedly competed with the adherents of a “strong hand”, but conducted reforms which brought oligarchs into power], who did not inspire confidence in the majority of citizens, but enjoyed support in the bureaucracies in the West; “strong business executives” – former Soviet directors of factories and plants and chairs of boards; and security officials. By the mid-1990s, the regime was formed, and only “proportions” [of its constituent parts] began to change within it then…

Civil control and an independent judiciary are not envisaged by the system. And further on, further on, further on… There were victims… The “soft power from the outside” focused on what became familiar to it at that time: protocol meetings with photos, oil and gas, helpless idle talk and, at the same time, neglect of the accumulated disturbing potential, and a bureaucratic response to real challenges…

It has been almost a year of complete human and political catastrophe… And further everything is just “driven into a corner”. The triumph of madness, cruelty and – infantilism, a shortsighted schoolboy’s vision.

VICTOR KOGAN-YASNY

is an Advisor to the Chairman of the Federal Political Committee of the Yabloko party. Head of the public organisation “Regional Civil Initiative – the Right to Life and Civil Dignity”. Candidate of chemical sciences.