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: Yabloko candidates to municipal deputies of the Kurkino district, Moscow/ Photo by the Yabloko Press Service
Today, the Tushinsky District Court of Moscow removed six previously registered Yabloko candidates from the snap election to the municipal council of the Kurkino district in Moscow. Earlier, the Moscow Regional Court deregistered three candidates for the Council of the Leninsky Urban District. All candidates will challenge the courts decisions, and are currently continuing their election campaigns under the slogan “For Peace and Freedom! For the Ceasefire Agreement!”.
Photo: Vladimir Yefimov / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service
The Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky City Court ruled to remand Yefimov in custody until 21 October. A lawyer is working with the journalist. Details of the case are being clarified.
It should be noted that in March 2023, Vladimir Yefimov was fined 200,000 roubles under Article 280.3 Part 1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation with a ban on writing in the social media.
Vladimir Yefimov is the organiser of the first non-governmental independent television company in the USSR – TVK, and was its editor-in-chief for 18 years. In January 2021, he received the highest award of the regional branch of the Union of Journalists of Russia – the Journalistic Glory of Kamchatka.
Statement by the Chelyabinsk Regional Council of the Yabloko Party, 23.08.2024
Photo by the regional branch of the party
On 8 September, 2024, there will be no candidates from the Yabloko Party on the ballots for the elections of the Governor of the Chelyabinsk Region and deputies of the Chelyabinsk City Duma.
The electoral commissions refused to register all of our candidates who campaigned in these elections with two main demands:
Statement by the Bureau of the Moscow branch of Yabloko, 23.08.2024
Photo by the Yabloko Press Service
On 20 August, 2024, the Tushinsky District Court of Moscow received lawsuits demanding the cancellation of the decisions of the Territorial Electoral Commission on the registration of six candidates nominated by the Regional Branch of the Yabloko Party in the city of Moscow for the snap elections of deputies of the Council of Deputies of the Kurkino District.
Photo: Vladimir Dorokhov / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service
On 19 August, Vladimir Dorokhov, Chairman of the Tula branch Yabloko and Deputy Chairman of Yabloko, received two money transfers to his accounts from an Armenian citizen whom Dorokhov does not know. Each transfer amounted to 2,000 roubles. Vladimir Dorokhov is certain that this is a planned action to assign him the status of a “foreign agent” receiving money from abroad. Earlier, Dorokhov, who was a Yabloko candidate in the elections to the Tula City Duma, was marked as a “foreign agent” in the GAS Vybory system (a special federal automated system for counting votes at elections) despite the fact that he had never had such a status. The politician contacted the police and submitted statements to banks with a request to return these payments. In addition, Dorokhov applied to the Central Bank and the Federal Security Service (FSB).
Photo: Yabloko candidates in snap elections in the Kurkino district, Moscow / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service
In Moscow all six Yabloko candidates for municipal deputies in the Kurkino district may be removed from the race. Two self-nominated candidates filed lawsuits in the Tushinsky District Court in Moscow against the electoral commission that registered Yabloko’s candidates.
Yabloko in Moscow and the Russian regions is holding another action of writing letters to political prisoners. After a historic prisoners exchange between several countries, as a result of which those to whom we wrote letters to pretrial detention centre and penal colonies where they were kept, and about whom we worried all these months and recent years, were released. Among them are Vladimir Kara-Murza, Ilya Yashin, Oleg Orlov, Andrei Pivovarov, Liliya Chanysheva, Ksenia Fadeyeva, Sasha Skochilenko, Alsu Kurmasheva, and Kevin Lik.
Yabloko Party Chairman Nikolai Rybakov, Deputy Chairman of the Moscow Yabloko Kirill Goncharov, Chair of the Yabloko Gender Faction Galina Mikhaleva, and other party members laid flowers at the monument to “Defenders of Democracy in Russia” at the intersection of Novy Arbat and the Garden Ring in Moscow. Here, 33 years ago, during the August coup d’etat, three young people – defenders of democracy – died: Dmitry Komar, Vladimir Usov and Ilya Krichevsky.
Members and supporters of Yabloko will meet at the intersection of Novy Arbat and the Garden Ring on August 21 at 11:45 so that to lay flowers at the monument to “Defenders of Democracy in Russia”.
Photo: Nikolai Kavkazsky outside the Basmanny Court, 2022 / Photo from Nikolai Kavkazsky’s personal archive
The Basmanny Court of Moscow sentenced Nikolai Kavkazsky to a fine of 2,000 roubles under Article 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (“propaganda or public demonstration of Nazis’ symbols or the symbols of other extremist organisations”). The case was filed because of Kavkazsky mentioning Smart Voting on his personal page on VKontakte social media. Kavkazsky links the case opened against him with the Moscow City Duma elections, in which he did not plan to participate. In 2022, Kavkazsky served a ten-day arrest under the same article, which further led to a prohibition for him to run in the municipal elections.
The campaign of registration of Yabloko candidates in elections at various levels has been completed in all regions of Russia and in Moscow. As of today, 73 Yabloko candidates are participating in 31 election campaigns in nine regions of the country under a single party slogan “For Peace and Freedom! For the Ceasefire Agreement!”. In total, Yabloko nominated 300 candidates in 19 regions in this election cycle. In 13 regions of the country, 139 candidates needed to collect voters’ signatures in favour of their registration. The list of registered candidates is available at the link.
Statement by the Federal Bureau of Yabloko, 15.08.2024
Photo: Ella Pamfilova, head of the Central Electoral Commission, and Grigory Melkonyants, Co-Chair of the Golos independent observers movement, at a round table devoted to organization of election observation as part of the All-Russian Civil Forum, 25 November, 2017 / Photo by Golos
On 14 August, the Vasileostrovsky District Court of St.Petersburg fined Boris Vishnevsky, Deputy Chairman of the Yabloko party and a deputy of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg, for alleged participation in the activities of an undesirable organisation, expressed in an interview on the YouTube channel of the movement for the protection of voters’ rights Golos. A similar prosecution is being carried out against a member of the Federal Bureau of the party, Alexander Yefimov.
Photo: Alexander Dudchenko / Photo from Alexander Dudchenko personal archive
In August, the Mayor of the city of Voronezh will be elected. Earlier, the head of the city, Vadim Kstenin, resigned. Direct elections of the Mayor were canceled in 2016, and for six years already, since 2018, the Mayor has been “elected” by the Voronezh City Duma from candidates submitted to the city parliament by a special competition committee. Yabloko does not consider the “election” of the Mayor by the Duma deputies to be a fair and democratic procedure, but believes it is important to present an alternative programme for the development of Voronezh. Therefore, Yabloko supported the nomination of human rights activist and civil activist Alexander Dudchenko.
Photo: Boris Vishnevsky outside the courthouse / Photo by the regional branch of Yabloko
The Vasileostrovsky District Court of St.Petersburg fined Boris Vishnevsky, a deputy of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg and Deputy Chairman of the Yabloko party, 15,000 roubles under Article 20.33 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation for alleged “participation in the activities of an undesirable organisation”, i.e. for participating in a live broadcast of a programme by the Golos independent election observers movement on 20 December, 2023. Earlier, Alexander Yefimov, a member of the Federal Bureau of the party from the Volgograd region, was fined for the same broadcast.
Photo: Ksenia Cherepanova / Photo by the regional branch of Yabloko
On 13 August, the Novgorod District Court considered the claim of Ksenia Cherepanova, a candidate in the by-elections of the Novgorod Regional Duma, against the Ministry of Justice. The politician demanded to be removed from the register of “persons affiliated with a foreign agent”. It emerged at the trial that the Ksenia Cherepanova had been included in the register twice. The judge refused to remove the Yabloko member’s foreign agent status.
Photo: Maxim Kruglov / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service
The First Court of Appeal in Moscow rejected the appeal of deputy of the Moscow City Duma Maxim Kruglov against the Moscow City Court’s decision to deny him registration as a candidate in the Moscow City Duma elections. The panel of judges needed no more than ten minutes in the deliberation room to make their decision, Kruglov said. The main argument of the judges, who ignored the lack of evidence of “invalid” voters’ signatures for Kruglov, was that there was “no reason not to trust the police”.
Photo: Yabloko candidates for the 2024 gubernatorial elections Roman Morozov, Vladimir Dorokhov, and Yaroslav Shcherbakov
Yabloko’s election campaigns for the gubernatorial elections have ended. Three candidates from the party in the Kaliningrad, Tula and Chelyabinsk regions did not pass the so-called municipal filter – collection of a certain number of signatures of municipal deputies in support of their nomination. Roman Morozov, Vladimir Dorokhov and Yaroslav Shcherbakov led their signature collection campaigns under the general party slogan “For Peace and Freedom! For the Ceasefire Agreement!”.
Yabloko candidates talk about how their signature campaign went, what goals they set and how they evaluate the results. Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov and Deputy Chairman of the party Anna Cherepanova give a political assessment of the party’s participation in the gubernatorial elections under the conditions of the special military operation and the municipal filter.
Photo: Vladimir Dorokhov at the Tula Region Electoral Commission / Photo from social media
On 7 August, Yabloko presented its objections to the regional electoral commission concerning the results of verification of 2,361 signatures of city residents in support of the Yabloko list of candidates. Yabloko was going to campaign under the slogan “For Peace and Freedom!” The Yabloko team demanded that 86 signatures out of 235 marked as defective by the electoral commission be recognised as valid and, thus, the percentage of defective signatures be reduced to the passing threshold.
Yabloko sends its warmest congratulations to the Advisor to the Chairman of the Federal Political Committee of the party
Press Release, 7.08.2024
Photo by the Yabloko Press Service
On 7 August,Viktor Kogan-Yasny, Advisor to the Chairman of the Federal Political Committee of the Yabloko party, head of the public organisation “Regional Civil Initiative – the Right to Life and Civic Dignity” and candidate of chemical sciences, celebrates his 65th birthday. Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov congratulates Viktor Kogan-Yasny on his anniversary on behalf of the party.
Grigory Yavlinsky’s interview to Zhivoi Gvozd YouTube channel, 6.08.2024
We should not judge superficially about deep and contradictory political meanings of the prisoner exchange. Let us note the most important thing: this exchange literally saved several lives at once. And one more thing: if such a difficult and ambiguous process is possible, during which Moscow and Washington negotiated directly, then it means that with the slightest understanding of the essence of today and the hopelessness of what is happening, it is possible to negotiate on saving the lives of many thousands of people, that is, on a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine.
