Press Release, 29.02.2020

More than 22,000 people took part in the Boris Nemtsov March, an action in memory of slain Putin opponent, which took place in Moscow from Strastnoy Boulevard to Academician Sakharov Prospect today. The Yabloko party formed its own column headed by the party leaders who carried a banner with the slogan “Fight for the Constitution of Freedom!”

The action was attended by party Chairman Nikolai Rybakov, Deputy Chairman Ivan Bolshakov, members of the Federal Political Committee Grigory Yavlinsky, Valery Borschyov, Yevgeny Bunimovich, Yelena Dubrovina, Sergei Mitrokhin and Emilia Slabunova.

As in previous years, the action was not purely memorial. The main topics of this year’s procession are a protest against Putin’s constitutional amendments and the demand for the release of political prisoners.

“Putin’s best amendment is his resignation,” “The power must be changed, the Constitution must be preserved,” “Freedom for political prisoners!”, “We are marching – they are sitting behind bars!”, “Torture and violence mean powerlessness” – these and other slogans were chanted by the march participants.

Nikolai Rybakov, Yabloko Chairman:

“We came here to honour the memory of Boris Nemtsov, a free man who was demonstratively killed right by the Kremlin walls.” The customers of this crime are still not punished. The political responsibility for the murder lies with the Russian authorities, the President, under whose windows this happened.

But we also came here in order to achieve the release of all political prisoners in our country, and their number grow every day. In the five years since the assassination of Boris Nemtsov, the number of political prisoners has increased by 20 times! They ended up in jail for being free people in a non-free country.

And the third reason, why we are here today. We came to defend the Russian Constitution. The Constitution guarantees human rights and freedoms. Now they want to trample it to make Vladimir Putin’s rule eternal. We do not agree with this, and we will not allow it. Because we are citizens of Russia, and we love our country. Thank you for coming today. Russia will be free!

Grigory Yavlinsky, Chairman of the Yabloko Federal Political Committee:

– The murder of Boris Nemtsov is the largest political crime of recent decades. Shooting an unarmed man in the back by the walls of the Kremlin, which has never been investigated, shooting in the back of a statesman, shooting in the back of a personal opponent of the President is a serious accusation to the entire regime. That is why we are here.

It should be noted that the Yabloko party organised the campaign in memory of Boris Nemtsov in many cities of Russia. Yabloko activists and supporters marched, picketed and rallied in St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Arkhangelsk, Barnaul, Veliky Novgorod, Vladivostok, Voronezh, Yekaterinburg, Ivanovo, Irkutsk, Kazan, Kaliningrad, Kemerovo, Kostroma, Krasnodar, Murmansk, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Orel, Perm, Pskov, Rostov-on-Don, Saratov, Tambov, Ufa, Cheboksary, Chelyabinsk and Yaroslavl.