Press Release, 21.11.2019

The wife, the mother-in-law and the assistant to Konstantin Kiselyov, deputy of the Yekaterinburg City Council and Chairman of the Yabloko faction, received threats with murder. On November 20, relatives and the deputy’s assistant were called from a telephone number unfamiliar to them and were threatened with murder and violence against children. The leaders of the Yabloko party are preparing appeals to law enforcement agencies.

“Three minutes ago there were telephone three calls – to my assistant, my mother-in-law and my wife. All three calls threated them with murder, violence and “advice” to take the children and leave the city. All the calls from the same phone number, made by one voice. They know the names of the children, that is, they are prepared. Then a text message came to my mother-in that we were dead. She is over seventy. Then there came a text message to my wife. The words were “[this is] for the temple”, but the word “temple” is pronounced indifferently. Possibly for cover. We immediately informed the St. Catherine’s Foundation that they might be set up,” Kiselyov wrote on Facebook.

Konstantin Kiselyov’s assistant contacted the police on November 20. The deputy and his relatives also intend to submit an application to law enforcement agencies.

“We decided that the threats aimed to scare us, force us to abandon what we have been doing. And we as a family decided not to give in. Therefore, today we have a normal working day, after which we go to the police to file a statement of the threats,” Konstantin Kiselyov said.

“Many thanks to all who supported and supports us. Thanks to the reporters who made these facts public. This is important for us, it is at least some kind of security guarantee. We have the best city in the world. And we have the best people,” the head of the Yabloko faction in the Yekaterinburg City Council added.

It should be noted that Konstantin Kiselyov was almost every day among the protesters during the protests against the development of the square and building of a church in place of a public garden by the Drama Theatre in Yekaterinburg in May-June 2019.

The Sverdlovsk branch of Yabloko also called for a referendum on the construction of St. Catherine’s Church, and Konstantin Kiselyov, Yabloko’s deputy of the City Council, participated in the negotiations between the protesters and the regional government.

Yabloko Chair Emilia Slabunova noted that the decision to build a temple in the park was unlawful, the party leader sent appeals to Yevgeny Kuyvashev, Governor of the Sverdlovsk region, and Alexander Vysokinsky, Mayor of Yekaterinburg, demanding a referendum on the construction project.

Konstantin Kiselyov, Candidate of Philosophical Sciences and teacher, was elected deputy of the Yekaterinburg City Council from Yabloko in the fall of 2018. In May 2019, he gave an interview for Yabloko’s web-site on the conflict around the construction of a church in place of a public garde.n