Press Release, 2.09.2021

Photo: Galina Filchenko and Dmitry Miropoltsev, lawyer defending Filchenko / Photo from Galina Filchenko’s personal page on Facebook

The Kemerovo Regional Court removed Galina Filchenko, the Yabloko candidate in the Prokopyevsky District (the Kemerovo Region), from the elections to the State Duma for her alleged links with an “extremist” organisation. This time the lawsuit was filed by the representative of the Green Party Yelena Matveyeva. Matveyeva’s demands were also supported by representatives of the regional Public Prosecutor’s Office and the electoral commission.

Earlier the decision of the regional electoral commission to register Galina Filchenko in the campaign was challenged in court by Ivan Utrobin, a candidate for the State Duma from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. The communist argued that the Yabloko candidate could not participate in the elections, as she had been connected with the organisations of political prisoner Alexei Navalny. The proof of the connection with the “extremists” was that Filchenko took part in the rallies twice.

After numerous requests from journalists to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and criticism within the Communist Party, Utrobin withdrew his claim during the court hearings on 30 August. However, representatives of the Public Prosecutor’s Office opposed the cessation of the case. The next day, 31 August, a new lawsuit was filed by Filchenko’s rival from the Green Party – candidate Yelena Matveyeva. The lawsuit again asserted that the Yabloko candidate had ties to the “extremist organisation” of Alexei Navalny’s Headquarters. The new plaintiff was represented in court by the same lawyer Alexander Todorov, who had previously represented Ivan Utrobin.

On 2 September, the Kemerovo Regional Court upheld the complaint of Yelena Matveyeva. The decision that Filchenko had been allegedly linked to an”extremist” organisation was based on the conclusion of the Centre for Countering Extremism. The examination was carried out within one day. In its decision of the Centre relied on two administrative fines for participation in rallies and posts on Filchenko’s social networks, where she communicates with people associated with Alexei Navalny.

“The expertise of Center E [Centre for Countering Extremism] seems to have been carried out from scratch. I do not know how these people can reason about my involvement in an “extremist” organisation, when they cannot even properly find out my marital status. They indicated in the documents that I was divorced, although I have been married for 30 years,” Galina Filchenko commented on the court decision.

According to sources of the Yabloko branch in the Kemerovo region, both plaintiffs were acting in favour of the United Russia candidate Dmitry Islamov. Islamov is a current State Duma deputy from United Russia, and a former Deputy Governor of Kuzbass.

“This whole thing is an order from the regional administration. The representative of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, and then [the representative of] the Green Party, is associated with the government. I suspect that he is also associated with the Centre E. This department normally does not carry out the examination so quickly. Throughout the entire process, the judge simply executed all the petitions of the plaintiff, and ignored ours,” Filchenko added.

Lev Shlosberg and Natalya Rezontova, Yabloko candidates in single-mandate constituencies and the federal list, and Viktor Rau, Yabloko canadidate in a single-mandate constituency, have already been removed from the State Duma elections on a fictitious pretext of their alleged involvement in an “extremist organisation”.