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: City views of Mariupol during the so-called “special operation” / Photo by Alexander Chernykh, Kommersant
Throughout its political history, YABLOKO has been a party of peace, since the war in Chechnya, when in December 1994 [when the RF authorities started a war in Chechnya], a group of State Duma deputies from YABLOKO (Grigory Yavlinsky, Valery Borshchyov, Anatoly Golov, Alexei Melnikov and others) went to Grozny and returned several Russian servicemen from captivity.
Photo by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC)
The Yabloko party organises collection of humanitarian aid for victims of an earthquake in Turkey and Syria. We ask all Russian citizens to participate.
Photo: Andrei Medushevsky / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service
On 3 March, the Yabloko Party University will host a lecture “Global constitutionalism: integration or fragmentation as a way to construct a new world legal order?”. The lecturer is Andrei Medushevsky, Professor of the Research University of the Higher School of Economics and a member of the Public Constitutional Council. The lecture will begin at 18:00 (Moscow time).
On 13 February, Sergei Mitrokhin, a member of the Federal Political Committee of the Yabloko party, an MP of the Moscow City Duma and a candidate of political sciences, delivered his third lecture out of the series of his lectures at the Yabloko Party University “Truth Instead of Law”. Has capitalism come to Russia? What is Russia’s “special path”? Is our country a separate civilisation? Sergei Mitrokhin answered these and other questions in his lecture.
Photo: The Turkish Red Crescent and Syrian Arab Red Crescent
The Yabloko branch in Udmurtia started collection of humanitarian aid for victims of a series of earthquakes in Turkey and Syria that happened on the night of February 5-6. Yabloko asks Russian citizens to bring medicines, children’s and women’s hygiene products, travel accessories, and power banks to the office.
Photo: Boris Vishnevsky / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service
The reason for blocking the page of Boris Vishnevsky, an MP of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg from Yabloko and Deputy Chairman of the Yabloko party, was his post in where he wrote about the pioneers movement, Moskvich brand cars and quoted the Polish writer Stanisław Jerzy Lec. This was announced by a representative of Roskomnadzor, Russian media regulator, at the hearing in the Vasileostrovsky District Court on Monday, 13 February.
When it was already blindingly obvious that Russia was about to launch large-scale military actions in Ukraine, actions that Putin refers to as war today, for a long time a vast number of the Russian elite and the opposition-minded mass media refused to believe that this could actually happen. In 2021, when it would appear that everything was clear — they refused to countenance this possibility. In July 2021 Putin wrote an article where he openly talked about his goals and intentions in detail – and yet they would still not believe it. And when in September that year United Russia was led in the elections to the State Duma by the Minister of Defence — they still refused to face the facts. They refused to believe even when the Kremlin issued an ultimatum to the USA and NATO at the end of 2021…
Academician Alexei Arbatov on the risks of nuclear war and relations between Russia and the United States
Kommersant, 09.02.2023
Photo: Acad. Alexei Arbatov / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service
The Russian Foreign Ministry warned of “the real danger of a direct military clash between the two nuclear powers” – Russia and the United States. Moscow believes that “a total hybrid war unleashed by Washington against Moscow” could lead to this. This statement was made in the context of the difficult situation around the Strategic Offensive Arms Treaty (START): the United States accuses Russia of non-compliance with it, which Russia categorically rejects. Academician Alexei Arbatov, head of the Centre for International Security of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told Kommersant correspondent Yelena Chernenko how the current situation differs from the Cold War and what the Russian Federation and the United States can do to avoid escalation.
Photo: Vladimir Dorokhov / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service
Vladimir Dorokhov, a member of the Federal Bureau of Yabloko, will represent the Yabloko party at the meetings of the Central Electoral Commission of the Russian Federation. This decision was made at the meeting of the Yabloko Bureau on 10 February. Previously, Yabloko’s representative in the Central Electoral Commission was Valery Goryachev, Yabloko Chief of Stuff (Secretary General).
On 9 February, the administration of Novgorod held public hearings on changing the Charter of the city. The ruling United Russia party decided to change, on the threshold of elections, the ratio between deputies that should be elected on party lists and single-mandate deputies. Up to the present, the Novgorod City Duma has been elected on a parity basis, but United Russia decided to reduce the number of deputies on party lists to ten and increase the number deputies elected as single-mandate to 20. The Novgorod Duma Chairman, Alexei Mityunov, elected from United Russia, was the formal initiator of the change.
Photo: Miass / Photo by Alexei Petrov, Wikimedia Commons
The regional council of the Chelyabinsk regional branch of the Yabloko party addressed the Governor of the region and deputies of the Miass city about the inadmissibility of liquidating local self-government in the Chelyabinsk region.
Photo: Sergei Mitrokhin / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service
On 13 February, Sergei Mitrokhin, a member of the Federal Political Committee of the Yabloko party, am MP of the Moscow City Duma and candidate of political sciences, will deliver the third lecture at the Yabloko Party University “Truth Instead of Law”. Has capitalism come to Russia? What is Russia’s “special path”? Is our country a separate civilisation? Sergei Mitrokhin will answer these and other questions. The lecture will begin at 19:00 (Moscow time).
Photo: Alexander Shishlov / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service
Andrei Chertkov, the lawyer of the head of the Yabloko faction in the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg Alexander Shishlov, filed a complaint with the Third Court of Cassation. He is challenging the decision of the Petrogradsky District Court to find Alexander Shishlov guilty of an administrative offense – “discrediting the use of the Russian army”. The cassation has been registered, and the judge appointed.
In October, Alexander Shishlov was fined 35,000 roubles. The reason for the decision of the Petrogradsky District Court was his posts on the VKontakte social media, where Shishlov reported on his stance that he expressed in the Legislative Assembly – his disagreement with the initiative to introduce criminal punishment for insulting the St. George Ribbon and give it state status, about the inappropriateness of folding the Ribbon into a Latin letter Z, and about the negative attitude to the announcement of a minute of silence in memory of the ex-LDPR leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky, since Zhirinovsky had been inciting hatred and aggression.
Soon Yabloko will start training of the third class of Yabloko’s Federal Party School. Lectures for the students will be given by Grigory Yavlinsky, Chairman of the Yabloko Federal Political Committee, Nikolai Rybakov, Chairman of the Yabloko party, and non-Yabloko experts. The names of the tutors will be announced later. In previous semesters, these were Nikolai Rybakov and Yabloko Deputy Chairs Boris Vishnevsky and Ivan Bolshakov, as well as Alexander Gnezdilov, a member of the Yabloko Political Committee. The training will start in March and will last four months. Yabloko asks all the prospective students to send their applications through the project website until February 21.
Dmitry Muratov and Nikolai Rybakov on the decision of the Moscow City Court to revoke the license from Novaya Gazeta
Press Release, 07.02.2023
Photo by the Yabloko Press Service
The Moscow City Court, on absurd grounds, deprived Novaya Gazeta and Novaya Rasskaz-Gazeta of media registration certificates. The judge dismissed the editorial board’s complaint against the decision of the Basmanny Court of Moscow, which took away licenses from the media back in September 2022. The decisions came into effect today, two months before the 30th anniversary of the newspaper.
Photo: Mikhail Afanasyev, his wife Yelena and son / Photo from social media
Yabloko closes the collection of donations to cover the fine for Mikhail Afanasyev, a journalist from Khakassia, Editor-in-Chief of the Novy Focus media and a Yabloko party member. On 5 February, his wife Yelena Afanasyeva announced the collection of 450,000 roubles closed. We express gratitude to all who helped to raise money.
On 5 February, a picket (which managed to obtain the permission of the authorities) against the ban on abortion was held in Kolyushchenko Square in Chelyabinsk. Yaroslav Shcherbakov, Chairman of the regional branch of Yabloko, as well as party members and supporters, came to the action to speak out against the ban on abortion in Russia.
Photo: Yelena Osipova at the opening of her exhibition in the St. Petersburg Yabloko on 31 January, 2023 / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service
The head of the Yabloko faction in the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg, Alexander Shishlov, sent inquiries to the head of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region, Roman Plugin, and the St.Petersburg Public Prosecutor, Viktor Melnik. Shishlov demands that the police return paintings of the artist and civil activist Yelena Osipova, that were illegally confiscated from the office of the Yabloko party, take under control due consideration of the applications made by Andrei Chertkov, the lawyer representing the St.Petersburg branch of Yabloko, and initiate a criminal case for a knowingly false report of a bomb in the Yabloko office.
After Belovezh Accords of 1991 [when the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus secretly gathered in Belarus and declared that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist and established the Commonwealth of Independent States in its place as a successor entity], an authoritarian regime began to take shape in the Russian Federation, the power in this regime consisted of three intertwined branches: “systemic liberals”[people in power who called themselves “liberals” and allegedly competed with the adherents of a “strong hand”, but conducted reforms which brought oligarchs into power], who did not inspire confidence in the majority of citizens, but enjoyed support in the bureaucracies in the West; “strong business executives” – former Soviet directors of factories and plants and chairs of boards; and security officials. By the mid-1990s, the regime was formed, and only “proportions” [of its constituent parts] began to change within it then…
