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: Svetlana Vasilkova / Photo from the Grazhdanin newspaper
Svetlana Vasilkova appealed (https://eng.yabloko.ru/30000-2/ ) the decision of the Opochetsky District Court, which recognised her dismissal from the post of head of the Pustoshkinsky District as legal. On 9 January, the Pustoshkinsky District Court received her appeal.
Photo: A screenshot of Boris Vishnevsky’s blocked page on the Vkontakte social media, an inscription runs “The material is blocked on the territory of the Russian Federation by the demand of the Public Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation No 27-31-2022/Treb622-22 of 20.05.2022
The Public Prosecutor General’s Office failed to send its legal representative to the trial on the lawsuit of Boris Vishnevsky for the second time. Since the summer, Boris Vishhnevsky, a member of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg from the Yabloko faction, has been trying to find out why the Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications (Roskomnadzor) blocked his page on the Vkontakte social media at the request of the Public Prosecutor General’s Office.
Deputies of the Legislative Assembly of the Republic of Karelia from the Yabloko party Emilia Slabunova and Inna Boluchevskaya received a response to their request to the President of the Russian Federation on the need to issue a decree on the completion of partial mobilisation. Assistant to the President Ms. L. Brycheva, head of the Legal Department of the President, reports that the conscription was carried out until the established number was reached, the number was reached, and in connection with this, the mobilisation conscription was completed, and there are no legal grounds for issuing any act.
Photo: Boris Vishnevsky and Emilia Slabunova / Photo from social media
Boris Vishnevsky and Emilia Slabunova, MPs of the Legislative Assemblies of St. Petersburg and Karelia, were charged with “discrediting the armed forces” (Article 20.3.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation). Protocols on an administrative offense were drawn up against the politicians on the eve of the New Year. Information about the cases appeared on the web-sites of a district court of St. Petersburg and the City Court of Petrozavodsk. The information on the dates and times of the court hearings has not been published yet.
Photo: A Christmas ball “The Apotheosis of War” on the web-site of the online store Printio.ru. The picture is by the Russian artist Vasily Vereshchagin “The Apotheosis of War”, 1871. There is an inscription on the frame: “Dedicated to all the great conquerors of the past, the present and the future”.
Dozens of thousands of dead and wounded (the true scope is unknown), and millions of refugees – such are the main things brought by 2022. This is the most terrible and irreparable. This is what will forever remain as the key recollection of the past year. I can’t call this the year’s results. But does the past year actually have results? I don’t think so. The past year is not only terrible, but also significant. There are lessons of the year, rather than results.
New Year’s greetings from Nikolai Rybakov and Grigory Yavlinsky
31.12.2022
Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov and Chairman of the Yabloko Federal Political Committee Grigory Yavlinsky congratulate all on the New Year and wish peace to all.
The Yabloko offices hosted final actions of 2022 in support of political prisoners
Press Release, 29.12.2022
Photo: Moscow / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service
Over the past two weeks, the regional offices of the Yabloko party have hosted the final actions of 2022 in support of political prisoners. Since the middle of the year, Yabloko regional branches have held regular actions of support, not only party members, but also civil activists take part in them. It has become a duty for Yabloko and civil activists to support those unfairly imprisoned with kind words.
Photo: Yaroslav Shcherbakov / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service
Employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Sosnovsky district of the Chelyabinsk region were ordered to re-examine the statement of violation of the law on elections at polling station No. 2164 in the village of Chipyshevo, sent by the Chairman of the regional department of the Yabloko party, Yaroslav Shcherbakov. In September 2021, a voter who came to the polling station found signatures in the voter book that ballots had been already issued allegedly to her and her six relatives who did not go to the polls. The bulletin had been issued even to a recently deceased family member. Arriving at the polling station, Yaroslav Shcherbakov, who ran for the State Duma in the region on behalf of Yabloko, called the police and filed an statement about the crime committed at the polling station.
Photo: Maxim Kruglov / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service
Maxim Kruglov, head of the Yabloko faction in the Moscow City Duma, proposed to make members of the Moscow Government, heads of sectoral and functional executive bodies of Moscow, and local governments report annually to the Moscow City Duma on their work. Amendments to the Charter of Moscow were considered at the meeting of the Moscow City Duma on 28 December. The parliamentary majority, consisting of pro-government United Russia and My Moscow factions, did not want to take on additional powers to control the executive branch power in Moscow.
On 28 December, an exhibition of children’s letters “Letter *** *****” opened at the central office of the Yabloko party in Moscow. The authors of the letters are children of Ukrainian refugees who are under care of the Civic Assistance Committee and the Lighthouse Charity Foundation.
On 24 December, activists of the Rostov-on-Don regional branch of the Yabloko party held a New Year’s charity event called “A Yabloko Pie” (in Russian “yabloko” means an “apple”). The participants baked apple pies under the guidance of chefs from the partner restaurant Shamaika House to donate them to nursing homes in the Rostov-on-Don region. There were ten fragrant apple pies in total. They were given to the Old Age in Joy Foundation, which took them to lonely elderly people.
Photo: Alexei Karnaukhov, Director of the Yabloko Anti-Corruption Policy Centre / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service
The Russian government proposed to the President to withdraw from the Criminal Law Convention on Corruption. Such a withdrawal maintains the line towards the break with European legal standards and will throw Russia 15 years back into the past. Why is the Convention so important and what are the implications of the withdrawal? A viewpoint of Alexei Karnaukhov, Director of the Yabloko Anti-Corruption Policy Centre.
The leaders of Yabloko speak in defence of Svetlana Gannushkina, a member of the Yabloko Political Committee
Press Release, 24.12.2022
Photo: Svetlana Gannushkina / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service
Throughout this year, the Ministry of Justice of Russia, almost without a break, assigned once a week the title of “foreign agent” to people whose activities and civil stance have become a kind of “red rag” for the authorities. At the end of the year, Svetlana Gannushkina, a world-famous human rights defender, was included in this list. The irony is that since February 2022, it was Gannushkina and her colleagues in the Civic Assistance Committee who took over the organistion of assistance to Ukrainian refugees, doing this almost around the clock.
On 25 and 27 December, the Yabloko party will host a New Year’s party in its Moscow office for 250 children – Ukrainian refugees who are under care of the Civic Assistance Committee and the Lighthouse Charity Foundation helping refugees. Yabloko has prepared an extensive festive programme, master classes, a photo zone, gifts, contests and much more for children.
Photo: Anatoly Marchenko / Photo from the family archive
Public hearings on Yabloko’s proposal to perpetuate the memory of Soviet dissident Anatoly Marchenko will be held in Tatarstan. This was announced by the head of the Chistopol municipal district.
Photo: The lecture by Valery Borshchyov, Co-Chairman of the Moscow Helsinki Group, at Yabloko on 21 December, 2022 / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service
The lawsuit of the Ministry of Justice to liquidate the Moscow Helsinki Group and ban its activities is another step towards turning the Russian state into a dictatorship.
The liquidation of the oldest human rights organisation in our country will become the same significant event as its emergence in the USSR in the 1970s. In 1976, when the Soviet leadership, after the signing of the Helsinki Agreement, was forced to feign recognition that the citizens of the USSR have the same inalienable rights as all people in the world, the Moscow Helsinki Group emerged.
Exceptionally wise and honest people, including Yury Orlov, Lyudmila Alexeyeva, Pyotr Grigorenko, Yelena Bonner, Anatoly Marchenko, Andrei Sakharov, Sergei Kovalyov, and Valery Borshchyov, waged a courageous fight so that the state respect the vital rights of people simply because they are people..
Photo: Svetlana Vasilkova / Photo by the Pskov Yabloko
On 21 December, the Opochetsky District Court announced the decision on the suit of Yabloko’s Svetlana Vasilkova to challenge her dismissal from the post of head of the Pustoshkinsky district of the Pskov region. As follows from the decision, Svetlana Vasilkova’s demands were “partially satisfied”: it was decided to refuse to recognise the decision of the Assembly of Deputies of the Pustoshkinsky District on the resignation and the “letter of support” of Governor Mikhail Vedernikov as illegal, but to satisfy the request to publish the judicial act in the regional newspaper.
On 21 December, the Yabloko Party University hosted a lecture “Political Idealism: an Illusion or a Reality” by Valery Borshchyov, an outstanding human rights activist, dissident, a member of the Federal Political Committee, Co-Chairman of the Yabloko’s Human Rights Faction and Co-Chair of the Moscow Helsinki Group.
On 1 December, Valery Borshchyov turned 80. He became an active participant in the Soviet human rights movement after meeting Acad. Andrei Sakharov in 1975.
In 2009, Valery Borshchyov was involved, as a well-known human rights defender and head of the Public Monitoring Commission of Moscow, in clarifying the circumstances of the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a pre-trial detention centre.
Photo: Governor of the Volgograd Region Andrey Bocharov speaking in support of the “special operation” in front of students of the Volgograd branch of Plekhanov Russian University of Econmics / Photo by www.rea.ru
Yabloko started collecting signatures in Volgograd against the renaming of the city after Joseph Stalin. The initiative on the change.org platform was launched by Alexander Yefimov, a member of the Federal Bureau of Yabloko. Yefimov’s petition against the return of the name of the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin to Volgograd gathered over 1.500 signatures in five days. At the end of the signature campaign, an appeal will be sent to the Governor of the region.
Today, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin delivered a report to the deputies of the Moscow City Duma on the results of the work of the Moscow government in 2022. After a short report on the successes in the economy, social policies, the development of transport, and the victory over sanctions, Mayor Sobyanin answered questions from the factions of the Moscow parliament. It was allowed to ask the Mayor of Moscow only three pre-sent questions from each faction. The faction of the Yabloko party, being aware of the decorative nature of the communication between the Mayor and the deputies of the Moscow parliament, nevertheless, did not neglect the opportunity to get answers to questions that concern the residents of Moscow.
