Is
Modernisation in Russia Possible? Interview
with Grigory Yavlinsky and Boris Titov by Yury Pronko,
"The Real Time" programme, Radio Finam, May
12, 2010
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.
Photo: Nikolai Rybakov / Photo by Dmitry Lebedev, Kommersant
Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov sent appeals to the Central Electoral Commission, the Public Prosecutor General’s Office and the Higher Judges’ Qualifications Board in connection with the situation in the Pskov region, where the courts supported by the regional electoral commission and the public prosecutor’s office, removed at once seven lists of Yabloko candidates from the municipal elections.
Photo: Grigory Melkonyants / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service
Grigory Melkonyants, the head of Golos [a movement of election observers], has been arrested. The authorities do not even try to hide that this is a political case, a way of settling scores with the wrong people. Vasily Piskaryov, Chairman of the State Duma Commission for Investigation of Foreign Interference in Russia’s Internal Affairs, confirmed to Kommersant on Thursday that the claims against Golos were connected with the upcoming elections.
On the threashold of the single voting day on [10 September] 2023 and the presidential elections in 2024, the authorities are persecuting activists from the best organised and professional part of the election observers’ community.
Photo: Yabloko’s banner running “10 September, 2023. Yabloko. Your Vote for Peace and Freedom!”
162 Yabloko candidates have been registered for the upcoming municipal elections. Two more candidates are participating in the by-elections of State Duma deputies in constituencies in Karachayevo-Cherkessia and the Krasnoyarsk Territory. In total, representatives of Yabloko campaign in 13 regions of the country, including Karachayevo-Cherkessia, Karelia, the Krasnoyarsk and the Perm Territories, the Sverdlovsk region, the Novgorod region, the Pskov region, the Moscow region, the Saratov region, the Tula region, the Rostov region, the Ryazan region, as well as Moscow (the Troitsky District). Yabloko expects to get its candidates into 24 municipal councils of deputies.
Photo: Denis Shadrin and Polina Kuskova / Photo from the personal archive
On 17 August, at 6 a.m., three police officers in civilian clothes with two witnesses came to the apartment of members of the Yabloko party, spouses Denis Shadrin and Polina Kuskova. Laptops, phones, bank cards, cash, and passports were seized from Denis and Polina. After that, Shadrin and Kuskova were taken for interrogation. Their status in the criminal case on the “undesirable organisation” – the Golos movement of election observers – is witnesses.
Photo: Ksenia Cherepanova / Photo from social networks
According to Ksenia’s sister, Anna Cherepanova, who is Chair of the Novgorod Yabloko, armed men broke down the door of Ksenia’s flat early this morning, at 6 a.m., and started a search. The police took Kseniya Cherepanova away for interrogation. However, did not grant Ksenia the right to contact a lawyer or her relatives, and for several hours nothing was known about her whereabouts.
Photo: Lev Shlosberg / Photo by Gleb Shchelkunov, Kommersant
July 30 marks the 60th anniversary of Lev Shlosberg, member of the Federal Political Committee of Yabloko and leader of the Pskov regional branch of the party. Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov and Grigory Yavlinsky, Yabloko founder and Chairman of the Federal Political Committee of Yabloko, congratulate Lev Shlosberg on his jubilee.
Photo: The Chelyabinsk City Forest / Photo by Wikimedia Commons
The Yabloko party opposed changes in the rules of land use and development in Chelyabinsk. On 27 July, public hearings on this issue were to be held in the city, however, due to the fact that a large number of objections were received by the commission organizing the hearings, the hearings were canceled.
Photo: Vitaly Fomin (left) and Nikita Dyomin (right)
Two candidates from the Yabloko party intend to take part in the by-elections of deputies of the City Duma of the city of Shakhty, the Rostov-on-Don Region. The elections will be held in September.
On 25-26 July, Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov, visited the Tambov region.
Photo: Nikolai Rybakov at the meeting with Olga Burkanova, Director of the Voroninsky nature reserve
On the morning of 25 July, Rybakov together with the Chair of the Tambov branch of Yabloko Yana Zenkina and other party members, visited the office of the Dobraya Tochka, a charity environmental organisation, where, together with colleagues, he brought things for those in need. Tambov Yabloko has been cooperating with them for many years and helps to replenish their fund with the items they need. At the end of August 2022, there were more than 11,000 goods in the warehouse of Dobraya Tochka. Every year, several thousand people receive help from Dobraya Tochka.
