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: Oksana Sergeyeva / Photo by the Novgorod branch of Yabloko
Police drew up an administrative protocol on the “demonstration of extremist symbols” – a photo with a flag with two white and one blue stripes – against Oksana Sergeyeva, a Yabloko candidate for the Novgorod City Duma.
The Chelyabinsk branch of Yabloko and the public project TyNeOdin74 (YouAreNotAlone74) will hold a charity poetry party.
We will reсite the poems of people who were repressed – in memory of them and in support of those who have been and are being subjected to political persecution now.
On 29 August, an administrative report on the demonstration of extremist symbols was drawn up against surgeon Valery Kochnev, who is a Yabloko candidate for the City Duma of Novgorod. A day earlier, Kochnev learned from a summon to the police that a swastika had been found on his Vkontakte page.
On Tuesday, 5 September, the Moscow office of the Yabloko party will host a press conference by lawyers and public defenders of the leaders of the Ingush protest, dedicated to the appeal against the verdict of the Kislovodsk City Court and consideration of the appeal by the Stavropol Regional Court.
Today the Basmanny Court in Moscow extended the arrest for Yabloko member Vasily Neustroyev for another three months. The court hearing was conducted in camera at the request of the investigator, who stated that there were state secrets in the case file. According to the Telegram channel “Freedom to Vasily Neustroyev!”, Vasily’s lawyer Daniil Berman objected to the judge when choosing the measure of restraint in June which was open to public, the case materials had already been announced and could not become a secret. Despite this, the judge closed the process from the audience and from the press and extended the arrest of the defendants in the case until 6 December.
Photo: Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev with his spouse Raisa Maximovna Gorbacheva during an official visit to France. Paris, 5 July 1989 // Laurent Rebours/AP
A year ago, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev passed away – the man who gave freedom to hundreds of millions of people in Russia, in the neighbouring countries and throughout Eastern Europe, the man who stopped the Cold War.
Gorbachev made it possible for Soviet citizens, who had been afraid to open their mouths freely, publicly and loudly for decades – on television and in the print media – to say what they think, without fear of execution, prison, dismissal from work, and even expulsion from the party. And this phenomenon was much bigger and broader than freedom of speech, one of the democratic freedoms. It was freedom from fear! Unprecedented for the USSR and an extremely important historical step, which, in fact, changed everything.
Photo: Vasily Neustroyev / Photo by the St.Petersburg branch of Yabloko
On 31 August, the Basmanny District Court of Moscow will conduct a hearing on extending the measure of restraint for the Chairman of the Frunzensky local branch of Yabloko in St. Petersburg, Vasily Neustroyev. The hearing will begin at 11:30. The address of the Basmanny Court: Kalanchevskaya 11, Moscow. The hearing is likely to be closed, however, those wishing to support Vasil Neustroyev may be allowed to the start of the hearing and the announcement of the decision.
It should be noted that the Chairman of the Frunzensky local branch of the St. Petersburg Yabloko, Vasily Neustroyev, is charged under six criminal articles at once:
Photo: The team of the Pskov regional branch of Yabloko / Photo by the Pskov Yabloko
The Pskov Regional Court upheld the decisions of the district courts, which canceled the legal decisions of the territorial electoral commissions on the registration of unified lists of Yabloko candidates at the elections of assemblies of deputies of the Krasnogorodsky, Loknyansky, Novorzhevsky, Opochetsky, Pechorsky, Pytalovsky, and Strugo-Krasnensky municipal districts.
The Pskov Yabloko considers the courts’ decisions that were on the removal of Yabloko candidates lists unlawful and reflecting extra-procedural interference in the activities of the courts by some unidentified persons. Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov demanded from the Chairman of the Higher Judges’ Qualifications Board of the Russian Federation, Nikolai Timoshin, to establish these persons.
The Novgorod branch of Yabloko published its programme for the elections of deputies of the City Duma of Novgorod. The key slogan of the Yabloko election camapaign is “I Vote for Peace!”.
“The 24th of February shocked everyone. A disaster happened. For many years, and especially for the past eight years, we have warned about the danger of such a development of events. But we were not heard… People are dying, and thousands of Russians have paid the price for anti-war statements, hundreds of thousands left the country, millions are hiding from mobilization,” runs the election programme of Yabloko. The regional branch of the party calls on citizens: “Vote for Yabloko – Choose Peace!”.
Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov visited the trial of Mikhail Afanasyev, a member of Yabloko and a journalist, in Abakan, Khakassia, so that to support Afanasyev who made his final statement in court today. The public prosecutor asked for six years in prison for Mikhail Afanasyev.
Afanasyev had been kept in a pre-trial detention centre for the second year already on the charges of spreading “fake news” about the army (Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). He is accused of publishing an article in the Novy Focus online media about the refusal of riot police from Khakassia to go to Ukraine a month and a half after the start of the special military operation.Read more »
Telegram Channel of the Yekaterinburg branch of Yabloko, 26.08.2023
The Yekaterinburg branch of Yabloko announced, within a framework of its election campaign to the Yekaterinburg City Duma, a collection of signatures for declaring 2024 the Year of Peace and Freedom: this will mean calling for a ceasefire and the start of peace negotiations.
On 25 August, a screening of Vladimir Kara-Murza’s documentary film “They Chose Freedom” took place in the central office of the Yabloko party in Moscow. The film is dedicated to the history of the dissident movement in the USSR from its emergence in the 1950s to the fall of communist power in 1991. The event was timed to the 55th anniversary of the demonstration of dissidents on Red Square on 25 August, 1968, when eight young people opposed the invasion of Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia. Representatives of the dissident movement took part in the discussion of the film: Yan Rachinsky, Chairman of the Board of the International Society Memorial; human rights activist and journalist Oleksandr Podrabinek; Svetlana Gannushkina, Chairman of the charitable organisation Civic Assistance Committee and a member of the Federal Political Committee of the Yabloko Party; Valery Borshchev, Co-Chairman of the Moscow Helsinki Group and a member of the Federal Political Committee of Yabloko; as well as Yabloko leaders Grigory Yavlinsky, Nikolai Rybakov, Ivan Bolshakov, Sergei Mitrokhin, Lev Shlosberg, Kirill Goncharov, and Alexander Gnezdilov. Yevgenia Kara-Murza, the wife of the author of the film Vladimir Kara-Murza who is currently imprisoned for 25 years, spoke to the audience via videoconference.
Telegram Channel of the Pskov region branch of Yabloko, 22.08.2023
Photo: The Pskov regional branch of Yabloko
Artur Gaiduk, Yabloko MP of the Pskov Region Assembly of Deputies, writes in his appeal addressed to Public Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov and sent on 22 August, that it is reported that the monument, opened on the territory of the Mikron Plant in Velikiye Luki on 15 August, became the first full-height monument to Joseph Stalin not only in new Russia, but also in all the post-Soviet area, since the time of condemnation and debunking the personality cult of Stalin at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956.
Gaiduk notes that Volgograd, Voronezh and the Moscow region refused to install a monument to Stalin.
Photo: Mikhail Afanasyev / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service
On 29 August, at 9:30 a.m. local time (5:30 a.m. Moscow time), the Abakan City Court of the Republic of Khakassia will hold a hearing on the criminal case on “fakes” (Article 207.3, Part 2, Clause A of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) against Mikhail Afanasyev. Afanasyev, the Editor-in-Chief of the Novy Focus online publication and a member of the Yabloko party, will speak in the debate and make his final statement. Nikolai Rybakov, Chairman of the Yabloko party, will fly to Abakan to support him.
Photo: Yaroslav Shcherbakov, Chair of the Chelyabinsk branch of Yabloko (right), and members of the referendum initiative group at the campaign cube / Photo by the Chelyabinsk branch of Yabloko
On 26 August, the Chelyabinsk Regional Court declared unlawful the actions of the Chelyabinsk Mayor’s Office to refuse Yabloko in holding a series of pickets “For the Return of the Mayoral Elections” from 25 August to 4 September. On the same day, the Chelyabinsk Yabloko and civil activists installed a campaign cube on the main street of the city, but the police illegally demanded to dismantle it. The actions of the police will be challenged in court.
A series of pickets is planned as part of the referendum on the return of direct elections for the head of Chelyabinsk. The direct elections were abolished in May 2010, since that the head of the city has been appointed by the City Duma. The initiative group for the referendum is headed by the Chairman of the Chelyabinsk branch of Yabloko Yaroslav Shcherbakov.
Photo: Yaroslav Shcherbakov and Kira Belaya / Photo by Yaroslav Shcherbakov
Today, the Second Court of Appeal in St. Petersburg canceled the decision of the Chelyabinsk Regional Court, which dismissed the case on the return of “Hyde Parks” [specially designated free speech zones where no permissions from authorities for rallies are required] to the centre of Magnitogorsk.
Yabloko launched fundraising among Russian citizens for an independent examination
Press Release, 25.08.2023
Photo: Nikolai Yegorov with his family / Photo from the personal archive
Nikolai Yegorov, Chairman of the Vologda regional branch of the Yabloko party, can be tried not only for “discrediting the army” (Article 280.3 Part 1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), but also for spreading “fake news about the army” (Article 207.3 Part 2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). The first case has already been submitted to the court, the second, according to Yegorov’s lawyer Alexander Pikhovkin, is undergoing pre-investigation checks.
On 22 August, Yabloko launched the new, 14th issue, of the journal of the Yabloko Gender Faction Znak Ravenstva (Sign of Equality) in the party office in Moscow. Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov spoke at the event, emphasising the importance of the struggle for gender equality and the work of the Gender Faction in the political agenda of the party.
On 22 August, the leaders, members and activists of the Yabloko party commemorated those killed in the August 1991 coup. Chairman of Yabloko Nikolai Rybakov, Yabloko Deputy Chairman Ivan Bolshakov, head of the Yabloko faction in the Legislative Assembly of Karelia Emilia Slabunova, Chair of the Yabloko Gender Faction Galina Mikhaleva, Deputy Chairman of the Moscow Yabloko Kirill Goncharov and other members of the party laid flowers at the monument to the Defenders of Democracy in Russia, which is located at the intersection of Novy Arbat and the Garden Ring in Moscow.
Photo: Mikhail Afanasyev in court / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service
The public prosecutor asked for six years in prison for Mikhail Afanasyev, a member of Yabloko and a journalist from Abakan. He has been kept in a pre-trial detention centre for the second year already on the charges of spreading “fake news” about the army (Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). Afanasyev is accused of publishing an article in the Novy Focus online media about the refusal of riot police from Khakassia to go to Ukraine a month and a half after the start of the special military operation.
