Statement by the YABLOKO party, 18.09.2014

On September 17 Rossiya 1 TV channel made a piece in the “Vesti” programme which was supposedly devoted to the attack on the deputy of the Pskov region Legislative Assembly, Chair of the Pskov branch of YABLOKO Lev Shlosberg.

The piece which can be called nothing but a political order didn’t say a word about the most popular and actually the only version of the reason for the attack on Shlosberg which was the revenge for

• publications and speeches on the use of regular military units of the Russian Armed Forces in military operations in the territory of Ukraine;

• public investigation of the reasons and circumstances of the death of the Pskov paratroopers which has found resonance within Russian and the world

On September 16 Lev Shlosberg sent an official inquiry of a deputy to Chief Military Prosecutor Sergei Fridinsky demanding to investigate all the circumstances of the death of the Pskov militants and included the list of the dead whose death has been proved by many witnesses.

The respond from Russia’s authorities was not late in arriving and was made in the worst tradition of Joseph Goebbels’ propaganda. The piece within the “Vesti” programme discredited the investigation which is being held or supposedly being held in connection with the attack on Lev Shlosberg, show head of the Pskov investigative department of internal affairs in anecdotic light and in fact put public pressure on the investigation by calling the crime strictly domestic. As a matter of fact the piece has once again proved that Shlosberg’s stance and the information on the reasons for the death of Russia’s militants that he and other journalists had published are true and correct.

The YABLOKO party insists on the full and all round investigation of the attack on Lev Shlosberg, reclassification of the case as “infringement on life of a public figure” under the Article 277 of the Criminal Code rather than “hooliganism”.

At the moment we acknowledge that the investigation didn’t achieve any results and politically motivated bastards publicly tell the police which way the case should be “carried” and “closed” at the state television.

The YABLOKO party once again demands from head of the Investigative Committee Alexandr Bastrikin to investigate the case within the Investigative Committee and take it under his personal control.
Sergei Mitrokhin
YABLOKO Chairman