Press Release, 24.04.2016

“A cultural curtain is emerging” between Russia and the rest of the world, and “even remnants of understanding are disappearing”, Grigory Yavlinsky, Chairman of YABLOKO Political Committee said at the committee meeting on Saturday, 23 April. It will be “extremely difficult, to overcome it, and it is worse than iron curtain,” he added.

The policies of the Russian government facilitate creation of the “curtain”. Amendments to the law “On Police” expanding the powers of the police, the creation of the National Guard, appointment of a General of the interior an Ombudsperson for human rights in Russia, an article by Alexander Bastrykin, Chairman of the Investigative Committee of Russia, on the ways to combat extremism in Russia demonstrate “construction of the modern totalitarian state.”

According to Yavlinsky, these measure represent “preparation for the presidential elections,” that will be a “bifurcation point”.

“The presidential election is, perhaps, the last chance for a peaceful, nonviolent change of the system, and many people have come to understand it already,” he said.

Publication of the Panama Papers and the international response to it showed that “the process of criminalisation of Russia’s image in world public opinion” was going on. Yavlinsky stressed that this would be a problem for “every citizen of our country, all people will be perceived as representatives of the criminal mafia empire”. Overcoming this negative image will take many decades.

Our country “has been self-marginalising from the world technologically, economically and politically”. “And that leads Russia to irreversible backwardness,” Yavlinsky noted.

“We have demonstrated military capacity and received the main prize – a feeling of being equal to the United States. If you keep your finger on the nuclear button, then people will always talk to you. But politics can not be carried out on this basis for long,” that is how Chairman of YABLOKO’s Political Committee assessed the operation in Syria. At the same time after the end of the operation, “we are still dependent on oil, and our exchange rate is determined at the trading sessions in London and New York.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin gave his assessment to such a situation last week during his television question-and-answer session last week – “get used to living like this, we have an “unlucky streak” now, so adapt yourself to these conditions, get used to the irremovability of the government and feel comfortable in this deadlock,” Yavlinsky summed up Putin’s speech. Yavlinsky also stressed that YABLOKO would not get used to it.

“We believe that our main political and historical task is peaceful constitutional and legal change of the system as a whole, including all its personal representatives. Otherwise, our country has no prospects,” Grigory Yavlinsky said.

The party “will implement this task both in the forthcoming parliamentary and presidential elections, and via all its political activities”.

Source: http://www.yavlinsky.ru/news/rossia/zanaves