Press Release, June 4, 2013
Today YABLOKO’s activists and YABLOKO leader Sergei Mitrokhin cleaned a part of Timiryazevsky park, which is situated in the north of Moscow. The action was held within the Environment Week, announced by YABLOKO in the run-up to the World environment day celebrated on June 5.

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Press release, June 4, 2013

Grigory Yavlinsky, founder of the YABLOKO party, has reiterated his proposal to nominate YABLOKO leader Sergei Mitrokhin for the post of the Mayor of Moscow, if the mayoral elections are scheduled for September 8. Grigory Yavlinsky proposed this first a year ago at a conference of the Moscow branch of YABLOKO, and then the conference supported that proposals. Read more »

Alexei Melnikov’s blog, June 3, 2013

Alexei Melnikov

In connection with the assumptions that the elections of the Moscow Mayor may be held in September 2013, brainwashing of the residents of Moscow that there is no alternative to Sergei Sobyanin at the mayoral elections has already begun. And if there may be an alternative, then it is only Mikhail Prokhorov, leader of the oligarchic platform. All the other do not count, as allegedly they are absolutely unknown in Moscow. Read more »

Statement by YABLOKO Chairman, June 1, 2013

The YABLOKO party expresses its categorical protest in connection with the plans of the VGTRK state television and radio broadcasting corporation to drastically reduce broadcasting of the Euronews channel starting from June 1.

Instead of Euronews Muscovites and residents of the Moscow region will be able to watch only Podmoskoviye (The Moscow Region) television channel there. Read more »

Press Release, May 30, 2013

The Volgograd branch of YABLOKO cannot place its banner with an innocent slogan “For Welfare, Peace and Love” in the Kamishin city, the Volgograd region. The advertising company that signed a contract with YABLOKO for placing the banner for a month began dismantling of the banner on the third day after its placing.

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Press Release, May 28, 2013

On May 27, the Krasnoyarsk branch of the Green Russia environmental faction of the YABLOKO party and public environmental organisations of the Krasnoyarsk region conducted a round table “Ecological problems of the Krasnoyarsk Region” in Krasnoyarsk. The main topic of the meeting was the discussion of radioactive safety in the region in connection with government’s plans to build a repository for high-level and long-lived radioactive waste near Krasnoyarsk.

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Statement by YABLOKO’s Bureau

May 29, 2013

On the threashold of election campaigns regional electoral commissions have once again initiated signing an agreement on honest elections. They have been practicing such agreements since 2003.

In the Sverdlovsk region, the Electoral Commission has sent to the regional branch [of the YABLOKO party] an Agreement on the Political and Moral Principles of Conducting Election Campaigns in the Sverdlovsk Region. Read more »

Environmental Watch on North Caucasus, Press Release, May 28, 2013

On May 28, 2013 police officers of the city of Sochi conducted two searches in the apartment and countryside residence of Vladimir Kimaev, the member of the Council of Environmental Watch on North Caucasus (EWNC). Both searches took place in the absence of Vladimir Kimaev. Searches were conducted concurrently by two groups of police officers. The one, which took place in the apartment situated in Maly Akhun area, was headed by lieutenant colonel Andrey Stolov. The second one took place in Tretya Brigada village and was headed by major S. Tsygankov. Read more »

Press Release, May 28, 2013

Vladimir Kimayev

Police is searching the apartment and country cottage of Vladimir Kimayev, leader of the Sochi branch of YABLOKO. According to Kimayev, his son called him about an hour ago and said that police came to their apartment in the Maliy Akhun district, Sochi, and demanded to let them into the apartment for searching for “prohibited articles”. Read more »

Press Release, May 27, 2013

The visit of YABLOKO’s leader Sergei Mitrokhin to the Krasnoyarsk region began with a scandal. The regional state television channel Yenisei unilaterally terminated its contract with the YABLOKO party on provision of air time by the channel.

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Press Release, May 27, 2013

The information circulated by some media that the YABLOKO party will support the candidacy of Konstantin Ilkovsky representing a pro-government Just Russia party at the coming gubernatorial elections in the Baikal Territory is not true. The regional branch of YABLOKO has never adopted a decision on the possible support of that candidate. Read more »

Statement by the YABLOKO party

The website of the State Duma published the draft law on “insulting of the religious feelings” prepared for the second reading.

The YABLOKO party notes significant changes introduced into the text since public criticism of the bill.

The authorities abolished very dangerous attempts to grant special rights to some religions as “an integral part of historical heritage of the peoples of Russia”. Read more »

Press Release, May 22, 2013

On Monday May 20 the YABLOKO Chairman Sergei Mitrokhin said that head of the YABLOKO faction in St.Petersburg Legislative Assembly Grigory Yavlinsky received threats in connection with his work on the improvement of the budgetary process in the city.

Answering journalists’ questions today Grigory Yavlinsky said that Sergei Mitrokhin had a wide range of information sources, and he was closely monitoring and analysing the work of YABLOKO’s factions in the regional parliaments, St. Petersburg inclusive. Yavlinsky refrained from any additional comments on the matter. Read more »

Statement by the YABLOKO party on reprisals against the Levada Centre

The Levada Centre is listed among the organisations forced to register as “foreign agents” after prosecutors’ audits.

The admonition came from the Savelovskiy District Public Prosecutor’s Office.

Analytical article and sociological surveys of one of the most respected Russian research centres were considered as falling under “conducting political activities”. Read more »

Press-release, May 17, 2013

On May 17 YABLOKO held the forth meeting with activists and candidates who will take part in the primaries for the Moscow City Duma elections in 2014, as the YABLOKO party provides half of the places on the party’s list of candidates to civil activists. As of today about 140 people registered on the YABLOKO’s website for the primaries and 30 out of them registered as candidates.

Galina Mikhaleva, First Deputy Chair of the Moscow branch of YABLOKO, and Mikhail Petrov, Secretary of the Regional Council, opened the meeting.

Different people came to the meeting including young IT-specialists and old age pensioners. However, all of them already have had an experience in different types of civil activities like coordination of action groups against road construction, in-fill construction, cutting of parks or working in election commissions and as election observers. Many of them participate in public hearings and collect residents’ signatures. Pavel Kudyukin, veteran of the democratic movement, a social-democrat, one of the University Solidarity trade union leaders, Alexander Sobranin, activist of White Ribbon movement, and Vadim Kozlovich, member of the presidium of the National Union of Textile Workers, and members of the Solidarity movement were among the candidates. The youngest participant of the primaries is 26 years old and the oldest is 72, most of the candidates belong to the 30-40 age group.

During the meeting Galina Mikhaleva and Mikhail Petrov told about the principles of formation of the united democratic civil opposition list of candidates and about YABLOKO’s experience in compiling such a list. In 2012 YABLOKO managed to form a united democratic list of candidates together with the Solidarity, the Democratic Choice and RPR-PARNAS for the Krasnodar Legislative Assembly elections.

The activists were interested in different issues: nomination of Gennady Gudkov as a single candidate from the opposition for the gubernatorial elections in the Moscow Region, YABLOKO’s ideology and details of the party’s programme.

The algorithm of primaries, joint protest actions and new forms of propaganda for the coming primaries and elections were discussed at the meeting. The participants of the meeting also agreed on the forms of cooperation and interaction, as well as on maintaining permanent contacts.

Galina Mikhaleva invited the participants of the meeting to join YABLOKO’s new project called “The Electronic Party” which represents an automatic system for working with party members, supporters and all who are interested in the YABLOKO’s activities.

Tatyana Ovcharenko, head of the YABLOKO ‘s School of Active Citizens dealing with protection of citizens’ rights in the housing and utilities sector, told about the school’s work and invited the participants to join its projects.

Activist Anton Kholodov made a presentation on “propaganda through provision of information”. He told about his experience of interaction with voters through cooperation with senior tenants and getting access to the front doors of all the apartments blocks in the electoral district. This makes it easy for a candidate to collect information about the residents’ problems.

At the end of the meeting the candidates were handed their candidates’ and voters’ IDs.

                                             Mikhail Petrov and Galina Mikhaleva

 Pavel Kudyukin

 Pavel Kudyukin

 Tatyana Ovcharenko

See also:

Moscow City Duma elections 2014

Statement by the YABLOKO party

Mass audits of hundreds of non-profit organisations (NGOs) across the country by the Prosecutor’s Office that are often carried out with the participation of sanitary-epidemiological and fire protection services [that are also looking for the ‘violations’ of sanitary-epidemiological and fire protection rules so that to fine or close the NGOs], as well as subsequent warnings about the need to register as a “foreign agent” manifest intimidation and suppression of the active part of the Russian society.

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 Press Release

The Regional Council of the Moscow Region branch of YABLOKO recommended to the YABLOKO conference to nominate Gennady Gudkov, an oppositional politician, ex MP and ex member of the Just Russia party, for Governor of the Moscow Region. Tonight Gennady Gudkov spoke at the Regional Council meeting and answered the questions from the Council members. YABLOKO leader Sergei Mitrokhin also spoke at the Council meeting.

Following the discussion the Council held an open vote: 23 members of the Regional Council supported the address to YABLOKO conference to support Gudkov, two voted against and one abstained.

Sergei Mitrokhin noted that he was satisfied that the initiative proposed in his speech at the recent rally at Bolotnaya Square, Moscow, on May 6, found support from the Regional Council members. “Gudkov has made a convincing speech at the Council meeting, which certainly increased the number of the Council members supporting him,” Mitrokhin said.

“Starting from this meeting we can begin countdown for formation of a broad alliance of the democratic forces, which is not limited to the campaign for the nomination of a candidate in the Moscow Region gubernatorial elections. I hope that the next step will be to creation of a single list of candidates for the Moscow City Duma elections in 2014,” said YABLOKO’s leader.

On May 26, the Russian Entrepreneur’s Day, YABLOKO will conduct a rally in protection of small business. The part has already applied for a permission for the action to the Moscow Mayor’s Office.

Entrepreneurs from Moscow, Samara and Tver will participate in the action.

Preliminary it is planned that the rally should take place in the centre of Moscow in Novopushkinskiy Garden.

The time of the rally will be announced after getting a permission from the Moscow authorities.

YABLOKO has been conducting a rally in protection of small business on May 26 for several years already.

LI President, Hans van Baalen MEP, has written to leader of the Progressive Party of Iceland (LI Full Member), Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, to congratulate him on his party’s success in the recent parliamentary elections. Iceland’s President, Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, invited Mr Gunnlaugsson, who has been made Prime Minister-elect, to form a government following parliamentary elections in which the Progressive Party made the biggest gains in electoral support; more than doubling their number of seats from 9-19. The Progressive Party has experience of coalition politics and as the Prime Minister-elect, Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, entered into Coalition talks, he said: “I feel good about this. There are of course many and big issues to discuss so this will take some time, but it’s right to be optimistic, in the beginning at least”. The Liberal’s return to government comes as the Socialist Party they replaced were unable to solve Iceland’s national concerns, resulting in voters punishing the Socialists for imposing tough austerity measures and failing to tackle high levels of household debt.

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