Press Release, 25.06.2020

More than five advertising agencies refused to place Yabloko’s banners with a slogan I AM AGAINST THE RESET [OF PRESIDENTIAL TERMS] because of “fear of the city administration”. The companies are afraid to lose the bid for the right to placement of advertising structures. This was stated by the manager of the largest aggregator of the outdoor advertising booking company All-billboards.ru (the regional branch of Yabloko disposes of the correspondence and records of telephone conversations).

In accordance with Article 29 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, everyone has the right to freely seek, receive, transmit, produce and disseminate information by any legal means. Censorship is prohibited in Russia.

The Saratov regional branch of Yabloko considers political censorship in all its manifestations to be absolutely unacceptable.

We urge journalists, the media, as well as all citizens who consider freedom of speech to be the fundamental right of a modern state to publish the banner that we were denied the placement of on the pages of their publications or social networks.

The Saratov branch of Yabloko emphasises that this “All-Russian Voting” is outside the scope of Russian electoral law. It does not fall under the Federal Law “On Basic Guarantees of Electoral Rights”, because it is not an election or a referendum.

Campaigning for or against amendments to the Constitution is not election campaigning in the sense of this law and cannot be limited to it. But it is not limited by the law on amendments to the Constitution either. Consequently, the federal law does not establish any restrictions on the right of citizens and political parties to freely speak out about the proposed amendments.

Earlier, the Mayor’s Office did not give a picketing permission to the Saratov branch of Yabloko referring to the order of the Chief Sanitary Doctor of the Saratov region in connection with COVID epidemic.