Press Release, 2.03.2022

Photo: Grigory Yavlinsky. / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

The Yabloko party officially demands that it immediately be given the opportunity to organise the process of exchanging prisoners and the bodies of the dead. Party leader Grigory Yavlinsky published this on his web-site.

“In Russia, the concealing of victims has been legalised, even relatives cannot report the death of a family member to society (up to criminal liability, according to the presidential decree of 2015). This is also why the exchange of prisoners and the bodies of the dead against the backdrop of the ongoing hostilities is becoming a key, top-priority national and human problem,” Yavlinsky points out.

He recalls the experience of the Yabloko party in the two Chechen wars. In the war in Chechnya in 1994, Grigory Yavlinsky with other State Duma deputies from Yabloko, traveled to Grozny to pick up captured Russian soldiers and the bodies of the dead Russian soldiers, as the Russian government refused to admit that they had sent soldiers to Chechnya.

“Today we are ready to provide all our capabilities, apply all our efforts and knowledge that we have for the practical creation of a special humanitarian corridor for the exchange of prisoners and those killed in Ukraine. We also consider it necessary to ensure safe evacuation routes for civilians and are ready to participate in this. Without this, the death toll will be many times higher,” Yavlinsky writes.

It should be noted that on 27 January, almost a month before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Yabloko party submitted to the President of Russia a plan of definite actions to prevent a war with Ukraine and the West, and offered itself as an organiser and participant in the civil international negotiation process in order to prepare direct negotiations between President Putin and President Zelensky.

“To stop the death of people, you need to stop the war! Since February 13, we have been conducting the “No to War!” campaign. Join, sign petitions, demands, and appeals. Let us all together make the entire Russian Internet a protest rally! We demand an immediate cessation of all hostilities on the territory of Ukraine and the return of Russian military and equipment to their places of permanent deployment! No lies! No war!” Yavlinsky calls.

Grigory Yavlinsky

is Chairman of the Federal Political Committee of the Russian United Democratic Party YABLOKO, Vice President of Liberal International, PhD in Economics, Professor of the National Research University Higher School of Economics.