Grigory Yavlinsky’s Facebook post, 09.08.2018

Photo: Anna Pavlikova and Maria Dubovik

1. It is already five months, that 18-year-old Anna Pavlikova, 19-year-old Maria Dubovik, 21-year-old Vyacheslav Kryukov, 25-year-old Sergey Gavrilov, 25-year-old Ruslan Kostylenkov, 30-year-old Dmitry Poletayev and 31-year-old Pyotr Karamzin are in Moscow pre-trial detention prisons. Another four people under investigation on the case of creating an “extremist organisation” are under home arrest.

2. The reason for the arrests was an illegal and criminal provocation by the Federal Security Service /the Interior Ministry. The agents of the Federal Security Service /the Interior Ministry invented, persuaded and forced young people to create an anti-government organisation. The agents wrote the statute, and provoked extremist topics for discussion. It is absolutely clear that the criminal case against these people was conceived, prepared and fabricated in the Federal Security Service /the Interior Ministry. This fact is confirmed even by the materials of the investigation. I repeat: the deliberate instigation of citizens by law enforcement agencies for extremist activities pursued by law is unlawful and criminal. A separate unlawful act is the involvement in a pre-planned provocation of persons under 18 years of age – like Anna Pavlikova.

3. The [young people] arrested on a case which was obviously fabricated by the secret services and being unlawfully imprisoned in the remand prisons are losing their health, experience psychological and physical pressure. According to media reports, the girls who have hardly crossed the threshold of adulthood are diagnosed with serious diseases that progress every day in the conditions of the remand prison.

Read more »

Press Release, 07.08.2018

Yabloko wants the interior to be an efficient service for people rather than a repressive machine. Therefore, Yabloko offers its supporters to participate in the contest “The Police in the Focus of Public Control” held by human rights organisations (The Moscow Helsinki Group and the Centre for Human Rights) and supported by our party.

Read more »

Press Release, 08.08.2018

Photo: Alexei Karnaukhov, deputy head of the Yabloko’s Anti-Corruption Policy Centre

The Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation granted the Yabloko party the status of an independent expert organisation for conducting anti-corruption expertise of normative legal acts and different projects. Yabloko has become the first party to receive such a status.

Since 2009, the institute of anti-corruption expertise of legislation has been operating in Russia. Examinations are carried out by the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Ministry of Justice on the basis of the Federal Law N 172-FZ “On anti-corruption examination of normative legal acts and draft normative legal acts” of 17.07.2009.

Civil society institutions and citizens can be accredited as independent experts. Such accreditation allows to check the legislation on corruption-related factors and demand their elimination.

Read more »

Rallies and demonstrations will be held in Moscow and Russia’s regions on 2 September

Press Release, 08.08.2018

The second wave of actions against government’s plans to raise the retirement age will begin on 2 September.

The Confederation of Labour of Russia coordinating part of the protests reports that actions against the government’s reform took place in 281 cities during the first wave. Different political forcesm including the Yabloko party, participated in the actions. Yabloko in particular held pickets together with the Confederation of Labour of Russia during the first hearing of the bill on raising the retirement age by the State Duma building in Moscow.

Photo: Sergei Mitrokhin, member of the Federal Political Committee of Yabloko, together with the activists from the Confederation of Labour on a picket by the State Duma on 10 July, 2018.

Read more »

Rallies against the pension reform were held in Moscow and Russia’s regions

Press Release, 30.07.2018

Rallies against raising the retirement age were held in many regions of Russia past weekend. The Yabloko party participated in the organisation of the events. In Moscow, the action in Sakharov Prospect gathered about 6,000 people. Anastasia Bryukhanova, 24-year-old municipal deputy of the Shchukino district in Moscow and member of the Regional Council of the Moscow branch of Yabloko, addressed the rally on behalf of the Yabloko party.

Read more »

Grigory Yavlinsky about a great writer and a courageous man who left us

Grigory Yavlinsky’s Facebook page, 28.07.2018

As far as in 1986, Vladimir Voinovich wrote the dystopian novel “Moscow 2042”, its plot in many respects resembles Russia of our days: communism was built in Greater Moscow, a complete merger fusion of the party and secret services took place, and the Communist Party of State Security is running the show. However, the writer hoped that the future he described in the novel would never come. But the reality in many ways has already surpassed his dystopian novel.

Read more »

Press Release, 26.07.2018

Emilia Slabunova, Chair of the Yabloko party and MP of the Legislative Assembly of Karelia, sent an appeal to Gennady Kornienko, Director of the Federal Penitentiary Service, demanding to check the facts of human rights violations in the penitentiary institutions of Karelia. The reason for the appeal were the materials from the visiting session of the Presidential Human Rights Council. The widely discussed cases of torture in the Yaroslavl and Bryansk colonies are no exception, it is a systemic phenomenon in the Russian penitentiary system, Emilia Slabunova believes.

Read more »

Press Release, 24.07.2018

The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) filed a case on violation of the antimonopoly legislation at the tender for snow cleaning in Moscow. The case was raised on one of the statements of Yabloko in connection with poor cleaning past winter. Six companies inter-connected through their founders are accused of violating Clause 2 Part 1 of Article 11 of the Federal Law “On Protection of Competition”. The total amount of the cartel for the initiated case amounts to 211 million roubles.

Read more »

Grigory Yavlinsky reflects on the fate of great scientists who got under reprisals in the 1930s and draws parallels with modern Russia

Grigory Yavlinsky’s web-site, 26.07.2018

Aircraft designer Andrei Tupolev, whose planes were used throughout the country, “spied in favour of France”. Biologist Nikolai Vavilov, one of the most famous Russian scientists in the world, “worked for the Poles”. Georgy Langemak, designer of the Katyusha missile system, was a “German spy”. Sergey Korolyov, the father of Soviet cosmonautics, was accused and convicted of “sabotage”, like Academician Viktor Glushkov, one of the best specialists in hydrodynamics, whose plans were used in the construction of the Volga-Don canal… This tragic list contains names of thousands of scientists, engineers and outstanding specialists.

Those who had to be imprisoned tomorrow asked for protection of those repressed today. In 1931 Academician Nikolai Vavilov wrote a letter in defense of Prof. Alexander Lebedev, agrophysicist, who was sent to the camp to build the White Sea – Baltic Sea Canal. However, five years later, Academician Dmitry Pryanishnikov wrote in defense of Academician Nikolai Vavilov. And in 1935 young [physicist] Lev Landau asked to release his colleague Moisssei Korets. And another three years later, Pyotr Kapitsa and Niels Bohr wrote to Stalin with a request to release Lev Landau.

Such were the 1930.

80 years passed. And now Valentin Danilov, physicist from Krasnoyarsk, “spies in favour of China”, Igor Sutyagin, Moscow physicist, “works for the British”, Oscar Kaibyshev, physicist from Bashkortostan, “spies on behalf of South Korea”, and Vladimir Lapygin, member of the Central Research Institute of Machine-Building, “turns out to be a Chinese spy”. These days we have learned the name of another “traitor”: Viktor Kudryavtsev, 74-year-old physicist also from the Central Research Institute of Machine-Building, according to the Federal Security Service (FSB) version, turns out to be a “NATO spy.

Read more »

Grigory Yavlinsky about Vladimir Putin’s meeting with Donald Trump and the difficulties of translation

Grigory Yavlinsky’s web-site, 20.07.2018

The next day, after the meeting with Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump arriving in Washington denied what he had said in Helsinki. It turns out that he was “misunderstood”, he simply had a slip of the tongue, “misspoke”, but in fact he, “let him speak from his heart” ([as] Vitaly Mutko [Vice Prime Minister, ex President of the Russian Football Union and ex Minister of Sports, said in his speech before FIFA in English with the heaviest Russian accent]), he wanted to say the opposite: he believed the American intelligence, which believed that Putin interfered into the [presidential] elections in the United States. Simply English is a complicated language, and the American president made a mistake with double negation, and “fake news” (“the deceitful American press”) distorted it even more.

And Vladimir Putin, returning to Moscow, also denied his words. Through the Public Prosecutor General’s Office (?!) he asked to consider his Helsinki statement on the withdrawal of USD 400 million by Bill Browder from Russia [and transferring it] directly to Hillary Clinton’s election campaign invalid. It turns out that it was about USD 400,000. The Russian President simply made a mistake … by a thousand times. And Putin’s speech was slightly “edited” in the Kremlin: the pronoun “we” was deleted in the published transcript in the sentence about the annexation of Crimea “we held a referendum in strict accordance with international law, with the charter of the United Nations”. A guilty mind is never at ease, as they say.

Read more »

Commentary, 23.07.2018

On 20 July, the Novaya Gazeta newspaper published a video of torturing (18+) Yevgeny Makarov, a prisoner in the Yaroslavl penal colony. After the publication of the video, the department of the Federal Penitentiary Service began an investigation, and the Investigation Committee of the Russian Federation instituted a criminal case on the abuse of authority. At the moment, it is known about the detention of six members of the colony. In April 2017, the Public Verdict Foundation reported on the beating of Ivan Nepomnyashchikh, a prisoner of the “Bolotnaya Square rally case” in the same Penal Colony No 1.

Here comes a commentary by Valery Borschyov, member of the Yabloko’s Political Committee, human rights activist and developer of the law on public control over places of detention:

Read more »

Visas should be cancelled also for tourists from OECD, EU and BRICS countries

Press Release, 20.07.2018

Yabloko Chair Emilia Slabunova, offered Vladimir Putin to cancel visas to Russia not only for football fans, but also for residents of countries that give Russia the largest number of tourists.

According to Yabloko, visas for tourists from OECD, EU and BRICS countries who come to Russia for the period under 120 hours (five days) and who have previously received an entry visa to Russia should be cancelled. Also it is necessary to introduce automatic multiple entry visas for up to 90 days for tourists from the above-mentioned countries receiving a visa for the third time or more. In total, 46 countries, including the United States, Japan and Australia, that are parts of these organisations and groups.

Read more »

Press Release, 19.07.2018

On 18  July, the Novgorod branch of the Yabloko party held a second mass rally against raising the retirement age. About 300 people took part in it. The participants unanimously adopted a resolution in which they expressed no-confidence of President Putin, demanded the resignation of  Dmitry Medvedev’s government and labelled the ruling United Russia party an “anti-people” party.

Read more »

Press Release, 19.07.2018

On 19 July, State Duma deputies in the first reading supported the bill to raise the retirement age: 328 votes in favour and 104 – against. Before the plenary session, activists of Yabloko picketed the entrance to the State Duma building with a demand to dismiss the bill. Protest actions will continue until the parliament abolishes the adoption of the law. Such a promise was made by Sergei Mitrokhin, one of the participants in the action and member of the Federal Political Committee of Yabloko:

“The law is predatory. The state puts its hand into our pockets. They took from half a million to several million roubles from each future pensioner,” he said. “The country disposes of huge raw materials resources, and it sells these resources to the right and to the left, and money goes to offshore. Why not to use resources to fill the pension fund, as it is done, for example, in Norway? Then we would have come to the State Duma to welcome the adoption of such a law. The World Cup has passed – there is pretext for refusing to give permissions to us for mass actions any more, and we will continue to protest. We will call all to come to the Federation Council, and to the President’s Administration. And we will disrupt the adoption of this barbaric law. ”

Meanwhile, Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky called on State Duma deputies who voted against the pension reform, to step down in order new elections of the State Duma are appointed:

“They fail in economic issues. Sanctions, the war in the Donbas, Syria, corruption – that is why they take from the people all they can for the sake of their self-preservation and irremovability. Oil money now goes to the arms race. Why do they have to think about pensions? Let those who voted today in the Duma against raising the retirement age, abandon their parliamentary mandates. If 104 deputies leave the Duma, then there will be new Duma elections. Then we’ll see,” Grigory Yavlinsky proposed.

Read more »

Press Release, 19.07.2018

https://www.facebook.com/yabloko.ru/videos/2283609588332629/?t=23

Exactly one month ago, Sergei Mitrokhin was detained by the State Duma at a picket against the government’s pension reform, and was fined for violating Putin’s decree prohibiting citizens to protest [during the World Cup] until 25 July. A month later – the same place, the same action and the same police – but they are already shaking hands with Mitrokhin…
The action went fine. We expressed the protest of millions of our fellow citizens, and we will not stop at this!

Press Release, 18.07.2018

On 19 July, Zamoskvoretsky District Court of Moscow will consider at a preliminary hearing the claim of the Public Prosecutor’s Office to the Council of Municipal Deputies of Yakimanka District, Moscow. The Public Prosecutor’s Office is trying to deprive the municipal deputies of the right to have assistants on a voluntary basis.

Read more »

Grigory Yavlinsky’s web-site, 15.07.2018

During his visit to Europe, Donald Trump continues his political trolling of Europeans. These are not just separate episodes. This is not even an individual political style. This is a conscious denial of the content of politics, its replacement with a show. And this is not politics in the style of a show, but a show instead of modern politics.

Read more »

Grigory Yavlinsky on why the crimes of the Bolsheviks have not received a state assessment

Grigory Yavlinsky’s web-site, 17.07.2018

On the night of 17 July, 1918, the Bolsheviks shot the royal family [in Russia]. A century later the successors of those same Bolsheviks are still in power. They cynically exploit both the memory of the victims and the customary honoring of their executioners. The [Russian] authorities send multidirectional signals on all the key events of the [Russian] past, disorienting people and depriving them of a clear idea of ​​their own history.

Read more »

Yabloko is filing a lawsuit

Press Release, 17.07.2018

The Yabloko party received a refusal from the Prefect’s Office of the Central Administrative District of Moscow to hold 33 pickets against the pension reform. Yabloko intends to appeal the refusals of the Prefect’s Office and Putin’s decree banning all the street actions during the World Cup up to 25 July (which officials refer to) in courts, up to the Constitutional Court.

Read more »

Grigory Yavlinsky on the upcoming meeting between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump

Yavlinsky.ru, 13.07.2018

The summit in Finland and the way the Moscow establishment and the Russian media are waiting for it is an indication of the position of Russia in the present world. A year ago, a meeting with Donald Trump in Hamburg on the G-20 was presented as a provoking interest but generally natural political event, also inscribed in the context of a high-level global event (see [my article] “We Are of No Interest to Trump” of July 2017 ). However, even then, the absence of meaning and subject for normal political analysis was very noticeable.

Read more »