Is
Modernisation in Russia Possible? Interview
with Grigory Yavlinsky and Boris Titov by Yury Pronko,
"The Real Time" programme, Radio Finam, May
12, 2010
Once a year, on the eve of the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Reprisals, people [in Russia] come to the Solovetsky Stone [monument representing a stone brought from one of the GULAG labour camps] in Lubyanka Square [the office of the Federal Security Service, former NKVD-KGB] to remember the millions of people who perished in the years of the Bolshevik political terror, so that to return their names [reading out loud the names of the victims of the Stalin’s political regime]. It is very important. Because all this can happen again. And it is recurring. Read more »
In the Novgorod region, 42 per cent of ambulance stations were closed. In the Voronezh region 40 per cent of libraries were liquidated. In the Saratov region in 30 per cent of houses there is no sewage. The state debt of the Krasnoyarsk Territory only amounts to 109 billion roubles. However, 60 billion roubles were spent on the fountain in the centre of Grozny, Chechnya; 43 billion were spent on the stadium in St. Petersburg; 14 billion on the Zaryadye Park in Moscow; 107 billion were spent on the maintenance of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Read more »
The court sentenced me, the municipal deputies and activists who defended the residents of Kuntsevo district, Moscow, from the lawlessness of the PIK development group, to fines of 150,000 roubles (approximately USD 2,300).Read more »
The situation in the Kerch Strait clearly shows that the presidents of the two countries are ready “to sign their doom”. Both Putin and Poroshenko are equally interested in the escalation of the conflict. At the moment foreign policy adventures are vital for both leaders to preserve their power, get their poll numbers up and distract [people] from domestic problems. External threats and military rhetoric are used in order to gain approval of their policy. The incident in the strait is so advantages for both presidents that they will try to delay dealing with it as long as possible to score as much political points for themselves as they can. Putin’s today’s comments at the “Russia Calling” investment forum has once again proved it.
Image by the Border Guard Service, Federal Security Service, Crimea
Boris Vishnevsky, head of the Yabloko faction in the St.Petersburg Legislative Assembly, called on citizens to begin collecting signatures under the letter to St. Petersburg municipal deputies and the leadership of ruling United Russia party to ensure real, rather than decorative, political competition in the election of the St.Petersburg Governor.Read more »
Oyub Titiyev. School teacher. Children’s boxing coach. Human rights activist, head of the Chechen branch of the Memorial [human rights organisation]. In January 2018, Oyub who was driving his Lada Kalina car was stopped by traffic police officers. During an inspection, a police officer found a package with marijuana in a car of a 61-year-old school teacher, children’s coach and human rights activist (just at the moment when another policeman in the presence of Oyub was inspecting the trunk). Since then, Titiyev has been in prison.Read more »
Igor Kochetkov, member of Yabloko, head of the “Sfera” LGBT organisation in St. Petersburg, co-founder of the Russian LGBT Network, won the award for Activity Fostering Development of Civil Society granted by the Yegor Gaidar Foundation.Read more »
Chair of the Kaliningrad branch of Yabloko Igor Pleshkov demands that Governor of the Kaliningrad Region and law enforcement hold those who attacked the monument to philosopher Immanuel Kant and his grave accountable for their doing.Read more »
The Shali District Court of Chechnya did not release from custody human rights defender Oyub Titiyev under the personal guarantee of Grigory Yavlinsky, Chairman of the Federal Political Committee of Yabloko.
Photo: Grigory Yavlinsky and Oyub Titiyev. Grozny, 6 March, 2018. Photo: Anna Artemyeva / Novaya Gazeta
On 21 November, Yabloko branch in the Republic of Chuvashia organised a round table on the improvement of Russia’s electoral legislation. Representative of political parties, public organisation and the regional branch of the Central Election Commission took part in the discussion. Read more »
On 19th November, Yabloko Gender Faction representatives (Galina Mikhaleva, Nikolai Kavkazsky and Irina Zabelina) participated in a round table on gender equality organised by the Delegation of the European Union to the Russian Federation.Read more »
They were not present in Crimea in 2014. They have not been present in the Donbass these four years. They are not present in Syria. They are not present in Central African Republic, in Libya and in Sudan… However, it looks like they are present in the Hague.
The so called “veterans of military conflicts” also knows as “servicemen on leave”, “volunteers” and “rebels” who are in fact simply “the soldiers of fortune”, in other words they are mercenaries from Russian private military companies, are intent upon turning to the International Criminal Court (ICC) itself to maintain their rights (!). The veterans of the underground military groups are planning to gain an official status, recognition, standard benefits, etc. from the Russian government which sent them to the war denying their presence in the hot spots, and, as a result, refraining from any social or financial responsibility for them. [The government] is concealing the losses, and it is not a rare case when the dead [militants] are buried in unmarked graves. It seems that the people “who-are-not-present-there” are no longer satisfied with the current state of affairs and are determined to insist of international organisation’s investigation into the secret military operations in Syria, in Ukraine and in Africa.Read more »
Yabloko Chair Emilia Slabunova once again demanded that Vladimir Putin release Oyub Titiev, Chair of the Chechen branch of the Memorial human rights groups. Yabloko Bureau has already demanded from Russia’s President that Titiev be released and protected by the government. However, Putin through his Administration refused to do it.Read more »
On 18 November, a conference of the Chechen Republic branch of Yabloko took place where the new leading bodies where elected.
Rizvan Ibragimov was elected Chair of the regional party branch. He is a teacher of the Russian and Chechen languages at grammar school No 12 in Grozny. His deputies are Sharip Tsuruev, Edilbek Khasmagomedov and Alfatu Gaziyeva. Ruslan Magomedov was elected to the Regional Council Bureau. Sharip Tsuruev was also elected to the Federal Council of the Yabloko party.
by Grigory Yavlinsky Grigory Yavlinsky’s web-site, 11.11.2018
IN BETWEEN THE WARS
The situation, in which the centenary of the end of the Great (First World) War is celebrated [in Russia], causes as many questions and bewilderment as the anniversary of the revolution in Russia. The unwillingness of the Russian authorities to discuss the crisis of the csarist autocracy and the terrorist essence of Bolshevism is understandable and expected. They are the heirs of the Bolsheviks with imperial ambitions, for whom the celebration (precisely the celebration) of the one hundred years anniversary of the Cheka [the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, further the KGB] and the Komsomol [the young communists organisation] is much more important than understanding of the tragedy of the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly [the representative body in Russia elected in November 1917 and dissolved in early January 1918] or the execution of the imperial family [of the Romanovs]. Furthermore, they also celebrated at the highest level the “century of the military intelligence”, which in the light of the events of recent months looks very much grotesque, much more than Halloween.Read more »
The Committee on Education approved of St. Petersburg Ombudsman Alexander Shislov’s initiative to add Levashovo Memorial Cemetery to the excursion programme for senior students. About 20,000 victims of the Soviet political reprisals are buried there. The initiative was also supported by Yabloko MP in St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly Boris Vishnevsky.Read more »
Yabloko MP in St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly Boris Vishnevsky put forward an initiative to compel St.Petersburg Governor to have extraordinary meetings with regional MPs within 10 days upon request. Read more »
Today the Parliament of the Republic of Karelia has voted down the initiative of Yabloko Chair Emilia Slabunova on the repeal of the municipal filter in gubernatorial elections. Earlier the bill did not find support among the members of the relevant committee. Read more »
On 30 November, Yabloko Gender Faction will hold a discussion on “LGBT Community: Ignore or Accept?”. Kirill Fyodorov, psychologist and founder of the movement “Psychology for Human Rights”, will take part in the discussion.
Why do experts doubt that excavation of Sandarmokh [a Soviet mass grave in the Republic of Karelia] is legal? Why cannot the excavation team prove that they are authorised to dig up the place where thousands of victims of political reprisals are buried? Why do MPs in the Republic of Karelia are reluctant to consider this issue? Is there a way to elicit the truth about what is going on in Sandarmokh?
