Is
Modernisation in Russia Possible? Interview
with Grigory Yavlinsky and Boris Titov by Yury Pronko,
"The Real Time" programme, Radio Finam, May
12, 2010
The problems facing the world after the COVID-19 pandemic will have two key aspects: medical and political-economic. In the case of the first issue, everything is more or less comprehensible. No mass vaccination, and no mass use of truly effective medicines is anticipated in the near future (if respective medicines are developed, their widespread application will be blocked by a number of specialists and organisations, and also simply ambitious sceptics interested in slowing down any specific project). That is why all the commotion over the pandemic will continue until society is overwhelmed by psychological exhaustion or until an effective and affordable vaccine becomes available. Subsequently COVID-19 will simply takes its place among a number of unpleasant, but at the same time not necessarily fatal diseases. People are used to everything, inter alia, to far more menacing and dangerous things. Our lifestyles, habits, consumption – it goes without saying that everything is changing, but slowly, and more often for other reasons.
In Kazan, police detained Chairman of the Yabloko branch in Tatarstan Ruslan Zinatullin. They want to bring him to administrative responsibility for a series of single pickets against mandatory army conscription, which he held by two regional military registration and enlistment offices on 15 May, the International Day of Conscientious Military Objectors.
On 1 June, Marcel Akhmadullin, activist of the Yabloko party, held an action in Kazan demanding that Russia adopt a law on the prevention of domestic violence.
Marcel Akhmadullin held a series of single pickets in the centre of Kazan, near the shopping centre Koltso. He stood with placards: “No to domestic violence!” and “We demand adoption of a law on the prevention of domestic violence!”.
Photo: Nikolai Rybakov at a picket by the State Duma against the adoption of the law on amendments to the Constitution. March 10, 2020
Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov commented on the party’s position in connection with the appointment of a date for a nationwide vote on Vladimir Putin’s constitutional amendments:
– In the Yabloko party we have full consensus on the amendments. The amendments both in content and the procedure of their introduction and consideration are unlawful, unconstitutional and reactionary.
Photo by Vladimir Klopovsky, Obzor: Emanuelis Zingeris and Boris Nemtsov
Two years ago, in the summer of 2018, the deputy of the Sejm of the Republic of Lithuania and one of the most famous Lithuanian politicians Emanuelis Zingeris was banned from entering Russia for five years. Meanwhile, he was not going to come for sightseeing, but as a PACE special rapporteur to investigate the murder of Boris Nemtsov – to prepare materials for the report and interview Russian officials.
Russia is a member of the Council of Europe and is obliged to contribute to the preparation of the report. And then Zingeris was “notified” by the Russian Foreign Ministry about the ban, without explanation.
On May 30, Engelina Borisovna Tareyeva, a member of the Yabloko party, turns 95. Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov congratulates her on the anniversary on behalf of the party:
Detention of Kirill Gontcharov. Photo by Novaya Gazeta
Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov sent an official appeal to the heads of the Moscow and the St. Petersburg departments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs with a demand to release the detained participants of one-person picketing and stop the detentions.
“Exiting the isolation regime, accompanied by the resumption of construction projects and permission of walks, clearly indicates that a one-person picket does not threaten the health of citizens,” Rybakov noted in his statement.
The party Chairman also demands that police heads “ensure the constitutional right to freedom of expression”. According to the Supreme Court, a one-person picket does not represent a mass event that are prohibited during quarantine.
One-person pickets in support of the Novaya Gazeta journalist Ilya Azar, arrested for 15 days, continued in Moscow and St. Petersburg today.
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.
