Is
Modernisation in Russia Possible? Interview
with Grigory Yavlinsky and Boris Titov by Yury Pronko,
"The Real Time" programme, Radio Finam, May
12, 2010
Photo: Ilya Azar picketing in front of the Moscow Interior Department on Petrovka street on May 26.
The Yabloko party is outraged by the unlawful prosecution of the journalist and Moscow municipal deputy Ilya Azar, who was sentenced by court to 15 days of administrative arrest for a one-person picket [such pickets do not require any permissions from the authorities] today.
Boris Vishnevsky, head of the Yabloko faction in the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg, made three amendments to the law on adjusting the city’s budget for 2020.
Vishnevsky proposes to preserve the previously planned expenses for the programme Affordable Housing to Young People, which the Governor wants to reduce by a total of 2.9 billion roubles. The MP proposes to maintain the expenditure on the programme by reducing, among other things, expenses for holding mass events and subsides to the strongest sports teams, including Football Club Zenit, whose owners and sponsors can completely solve all the financial problems of the team.
The Kaliningrad branch of Yabloko held a conference, which elected the governing bodies of the party’s regional branch for the next two years. During the secret ballot, Igor Pleshkov was unanimously re-elected as Chairman. His deputies were Olga Ivanova and Yelena Voitekhovich. Olga Ivanova was also elected to the Federal Council of the party.
Oleg Rodin, Chairman of the Nizhny Novgorod branch of the Yabloko party, appealed to Gleb Nikitin, Governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region, with a demand to include the MP Nizhegorodelectrotrans and MUP Express in Dzerzhinsk companies into the list of enterprises affected by the coronavirus pandemic that should receive aid from the government.
The Tatarstan branch of the Yabloko party organised a protest action calling to turn down Vladimir Putin’s amendments to the Russian Constitution. Ruslan Zinatullin, Chairman of the Tatarstan branch of the party, held a one-person picket [which does not require any permissions from the authorities). He is certain that since the government “deceived medical workers with additional payments promised by Putin, it will deceive citizens with amendments to the Constitution.”
An appeal by the Federal Bureau of Yabloko, 27.05.2020
The Federal Bureau of Yabloko appealed to Public Prosecutor General of Russia after more than 200 students were unlawfully expelled from the Russian State Social Sciences University during the pandemic when they could not even appeal the decisions of the university management. One of the expelled students, Yegor Kurasin, is Yabloko’s activist.
May 26 marks the 80th anniversary of Anatoly Kazbekovich Sidakov, renowned Caucasian human rights defender, leader of the North Ossetian branch of the Yabloko party, and editor of the Mir Kavkazu (Peace to Caucasus) newspaper. Yabloko party’s Chairman Nikolai Rybakov and Grigory Yavlinsky, Chairman of the Federal Political Committee of the party, congratulate him on this anniversary.
Chair the Omsk Yabloko Tatyana Nagibina sent an appeal to President Vladimir Putin, Minister of Natural Resources and Ecology Dmitry Kobylkin, and Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resource Usage. The leader of the regional branch of Yabloko calls the authorities to adopt measures for reduction of pollution of the Omsk air by vehicles exhaust gases.
On 20 May, 2020, the Federation Council [the upper chamber of the Russian parliament] approved three laws relating to the electoral process in the Russian Federation. All the three laws are repressive, toughly restrictive, and significantly impede the exercise of constitutional electoral rights of citizens. They facilitate creation of additional mechanisms for manipulating elections, preventing unwanted candidates to participate in the elections, both before and in the cause of election campaigns, as well as mechanisms to ensure the necessary voting results, that is, election fraud.
Photo: Governor Beglov and Boris Vishnevsky, head of the Yabloko faction in the Legislative Assembly of St.Petersburg
Boris Vishnevsky, Deputy Chairman of the Yabloko party and the head of the party’s faction in the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg, sent to the Legal Department of the city parliament a draft decision on no confidence in Governor Alexander Beglov.
While federal and regional officials shift responsibility to each other, the estate of the Vasilchikovs and the Stroganovs in the village of Volyshovo has been perishing
Press Release, 20.05.2020
Photo: Here and below are the photos of the manor house of the Vasilchikovs-Stroganovs in the village of Volyshovo is perishing
In February 2020, Lev Shlosberg, deputy of the Pskov Regional Assembly from the Yabloko faction, sent an appeal to the Public Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation Igor Krasnov, asking him to conduct an extraordinary check on the fulfillment by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and the Federal Agency for State Property Management of their responsibilities to preserve and use the cultural heritage site of the federal importance – the ensemble of buildings of the Vasilchikovs and the Stroganovs estate located in the village of Volyshovo, the Porkhov district of the Pskov region, which is a unique monument of town-planning and architecture of the 1600s – 1800s.
The Karelian parliament did not support Yabloko’s proposal to compensate teachers for the cost of distance teaching
Press Release, 22.05.2020
The legislative assembly of Karelia refused to support the appeal of the Yabloko faction to the head of the Russian government Mikhail Mishustin on the problems of the Russian education system in the context of the coronavirus pandemic. In particular, Yabloko’s deputies proposed an additional payment for teachers compensating them from the federal budget for additional costs of distance teaching and intensification of labour in the amount of an average teacher’s salary in Karelia.
An expert group under the Bureau of the Yabloko party in the Altai Territory, headed by Andrei Tkachenko, discovered over 37 million roubles in the budget of Barnaul that the authorities of the regional capital had planned to spend on gifts and celebrations. The Altai branch of Yabloko suggested that the city authorities reallocate these funds to support citizens and businesses during the period of restrictive measures caused by the spread of the coronavirus infection.
Anna Cherepanova, deputy of the Duma of Veliky Novgorod and Chair of the Novgorod branch of Yabloko, turned to the Public Prosecutor General’s Office, the Investigative Committee and the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs. She demands a check on the fact of damage to the monument One Thousand Years of Russia as a result of chemical treatment with a solution of chlorine.
“This is a display of extreme idiocy. The military from the chemical protection unit poured chlorine over the Novgorod symbol. What for? Why? For the sake of PR and a beautiful picture in the media, illustrating the process of disinfection of the city? ” the Chair of the Novgorod Yabloko is perplexed.
“Not only is this a completely meaningless action, but experts say that it has damaged the world famous monument. Then it should be qualified as vandalism with the corresponding legal consequences,” Anna Cherepanova says.
On Tuesday, 19 May, the Social Democratic Faction of the Yabloko Party, Yabloko’s Gender Faction, and the Committee for Combating Xenophobia held an online conference “The situation with Migrants in Russia during the Pandemic”.
The situation with migrants has become much more complicated during the pandemic, and even removal of restrictions on work in a number of regions and a number of industries did not eliminate many of the difficulties.
Previously, mass media pointed to indications of fraud in the tender
Press Release, 20.05.2020
Yabloko’s Anti-Corruption Policy Centre demanded that the Investigative Committee check the heads of the State Public Institution Information City for a crime under Article 285 of the Criminal Code. According to mass media reports, before that the contractor in the development of the Social Monitoring tracing application had written the technical task for another tracing application for the Mayor’s Office which had been bought by the Mayor’s Office to control the builders in the Mayor’s Moscow renovation project (building new housing instead of pulled down houses built in 1960s).
The Nizhny Novgorod branch of the Yabloko party appealed to Gleb Nikitin, Governor of the Nizhny Novgorod Region, with a demand to dismiss David Melik-Guseynov, Deputy Governor and Minister of Healthcare of the Nizhny Novgorod Region.
Earlier, the Minister published a post on his social networks criticising doctors of the Sormovskaya emergency medical station, who were outraged by the government’s failure to fulfill promises on additional payments to medical workers. The Minister of Healthcare called them provocateurs, intimidated them and threatened medical personnel with police.
Despite the sanitary and epidemiological situation in the Leinigrad Region in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the administration of the Priozersky municipal district of the Leningrad Region intends to hold public hearings on the recultivation of the local landfill. District officials turned down the proposal of the Yabloko branch in the Leningrad Region to postpone the hearing until the coronavirus restrictions were completely lifted. Public hearings are scheduled for May 25.
On 18 May, employees of the Ivanovo ambulance station with the support of the Ivanovo branch of Yabloko filed a complaint with the regional Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Governor of the Ivanovo region. The appeal was signed by about 30 people. Drivers and paramedics of the ambulance station complain that only a few received the promised allowances for working with COVID-positive patients.
On 28 May, Andrei Babushkin’s online lecture “Police Actions During the Pandemic” will be held at Yabloko Party University. The lecture will begin at 16.00.
Andrei Babushkin is member of the Federal Bureau of the Yabloko party, Chairman of the Committee for Civil Rights and member of the Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights under the President of Russia.
