Press Release, 14.02.2018

Today, on 14 February, presidential candidate Grigory Yavlinsky met with the coordinators of the Yabloko’s volunteers in the central office of the party. Grigory Yavlinsky’s supporters will coordinate the work of thousands of volunteers in the presidential elections, who have already registered and continue to register on the Yabloko website.

At the beginning of the meeting, Nikolai Rybakov, head of Yavlinsky’s election headquarters, said that the mission of the headquarters was to involve 50,000 people throughout the country in the campaign, “so that these people were not only in capitals, but also in small towns and villages.”

“We have a very short election campaign, and we need to concentrate and gather all the forces, because nobody has ever done such an electoral project in Russia,” Rybakov told to the coordinators of the volunteers.

Rybakov also said that in the database of Yabloko’s contacts contained about 270,000 people who had already worked with the party and supported it. Answering a question about whether Grigory Yavlinsky’s headquarters would focus on some definite regions, Nikolai Rybakov noted that “one could study geography of Russia” on the basis of supporters data base. “There is not a single polling station in the country, where at least one person did not vote for Yabloko!” he said.

Grigory Yavlinsky noted that “a real campaign is a campaign where not so much campaigners, propagandists, image-makers and the media take place”, but the one where every supporter wants to convince others – relatives, friends, acquaintances and colleagues.

Yavlinsky stressed that his presidential programme targets the overwhelming majority of Russians, rather than certain segments of the society. “I traveled a lot around our country. The programme with which I go to the polls is not my personal programme. This is a professional reflection of what people really want. This programme is not that of an individual candidate – this is the programme of the citizens of our country,” Yavlinsky said.

“We have a lot to fight for! Most importantly: if dozens of millions of people vote for our programme, we will force any authority to carry out this programme. The words “will force” are the key words here! If we are citizens, if we all live here, if we are not indifferent how we live, we must force the authorities to carry out those programmes that we, as the nation, need in Russia. And this now depends on you to a large extent,” Yavlinsky told the volunteers of the campaign. “Our political life has evolved in such a way, that we are the most serious alternative that exists in Russia today,” Yavlinsky added.

The participants of the meeting asked the presidential candidate a number of questions regarding the sections of his programme. Grigory Yavlinsky once again stressed that the first steps should be cessation of Russia’s participation in wars and foreign policy adventures, and concentration of resources on the creation of a powerful modern economy.