Press Release, 19.02.2020

Photo: Yevgeny Artemyev.

Irina Sotnikova, nurse of Kemerovo Children’s Clinic No. 1, was announced that she would be fired in April. Formally, a nurse with forty years of experience was informed that her job would be cut. However, in informal conversations, she was informed that her the dismissal was associated with the activity of her husband Yevgeny Artemyev, member of the Regional Council of the Kemerovo branch of Yabloko and organiser of the March of the memory of Boris Nemtsov in Kemerovo.

According to Yevgeny Artemyev, the upcoming dismissal of his wife is associated with the organisation of Boris Nemtsov memorial march and will be already the second dismissal for his wife. The first time Irina Sotnikova was fired from the clinic in 2016, when Artemyev ran for deputy in the Kemerovo City Council. However, later she managed to get a job in the same clinic with a demotion from senior to junior nurse.

Yevgeny Artemyev was repeatedly subjected to administrative arrests and fines for organization of actions in memory of Nemtsov. He emphasises that the regional authorities react extremely harshly to holding actions in memory of the murdered politician. Since 2015, they have refused to give permissions to actions in Kemerovo, and press on their participants. The situation did not change after the Aman Tuleyev, Governor of the region for many years, left his post, and Sergey Tsivilev was elected as the new Governor. Thus, in 2019, Artemyev was arrested for five days for a one person picket (which does not require any permissions) when he stood with a photo of Boris Nemtsov

In 2020, the Kemerovo administration also refused to give a permission for the Boris Nemtsov Memorial March in the places proposed by the organisers and sent them to hold a rally in the Hyde Park located in a field, on the territory of the former car market, from 7 to 9 p.m. The organisers of the commemorative action refused to hold an action at that site.

Politician and statesman Boris Nemtsov was shot dead on the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge near the Kremlin in Moscow on February 27, 2015. The Yabloko party annually takes part in the actions in memory of the murdered politician throughout the country. Yabloko places political responsibility for the murder on President Vladimir Putin.