Statement by the Yabloko Bureau, 3.04.2020

The situation in Russia has been rapidly changing for the worse. The number of people affected by COVID-19 infection has been growing every day.

In most regions, bans and restrictions have been imposed on the work of enterprises and organisations in public catering, trade, tourism, culture, sports, entertainment and most services. This deprives a huge number of citizens and enterprises of means of subsistence and threatens to ruin a significant part of small and medium-sized businesses.

President Vladimir Putin extended the “days off” until the end of April and allowed regional authorities to independently introduce additional measures, including restrictive ones.

The entire severity of the economic consequences of the current force majeure situation is passed on to Russian entrepreneurs. Along with the destruction of a significant part of the economy, this will lead to the fact that by the end of April a huge number of citizens will have nowhere to work and no means to buy food, medicines, essential goods and pay for [utility services for their] apartments.

The refusal of the President and the government to adopt and implement a reasonable, professional plan of action and their transfer of responsibility to the regional leaders who are unprepared to deal with the epidemic of such complexity and scale, means that the federal government abrogates its responsibility in this critical situation.

The federal authorities continue to allocate absurdly small amounts of funds (about 1.2 percent of GDP) to support citizens and the economy — ten times less than what is needed.

There is a clear and well-thought-out alternative to these actions of the authorities – on March 27, 2020, the Yabloko party proposed a plan to Protect the Economy and People (On Urgent Measures to Support Citizens and Entrepreneurs).

The Yabloko party proposes to focus efforts in two areas:

1) direct financial support to citizens affected by the economic crisis;

2) aid to the private economy, small and medium-sized enterprises, which find themselves in a difficult economic situation,

by allocating at least ten per cent of the country’s GDP for these purposes by the end of 2020.

The Yabloko party once again insists on the urgency of adopting a full package of financial support measures for citizens and Russian entrepreneurs.

Nikolai Rybakov,

Yabloko Chairman