YouTube channel Zhivoy Gvozd, 18.09.2023

Broadcasted live on 16.09.2023

Over 30 years, the Yabloko party has offered people in Russia a different path eleven times: eight times in parliamentary elections and three times in presidential elections. This path would never have led our country to what is happening now. We proposed to build a state of welfare and human dignity, freedom and democracy with life without fear and war.

But even today, in the most difficult conditions, when it became dangerous to campaign for peace and freedom, Yabloko candidates were reaching out to people and told them the truth about the situation in the country. And people only had to vote – secretly, without any risk – for peace and freedom. Every vote was extremely important. But, unfortunately, this did not happen on a serious scale. For the most part, people did not understand that voting was the way to change the situation. And without this understanding nothing can be changed.

Certainly, in Russia for many years people have been deliberately taught that their vote does not decide anything. Depoliticisation took place both on the part of the authorities and on the part of brainless elites and journalists – through the media and the so-called public opinion leaders. As a result, not only was Russia’s political field cleared off, but society was destroyed. And today it is necessary to vote for Yabloko because these are votes for an immediate ceasefire agreement (see “On the Urgency and Inevitability of a Ceasefire”), whether it is voting in different elections, talking to one’s friends, co-workers, and neighbours or commenting on social media. Today all this matters.

Grigory Yavlinsky spoke about how even such elections can change the situation in modern Russia on the YouTube channel Zhivoy Gvozd. A full transcript is here.

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.